ALICE is a general-purpose heavy-ion experiment designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark–gluon plasma in nucleus–nucleus collisions at the LHC. It currently involves more than 900 physicists and senior engineers, from both the nuclear and high-energy physics sectors, from over 90 institutions in about 30 countries.The ALICE detector is designed to cope with the highest particle multiplicities above those anticipated for Pb–Pb collisions (dNch/dy up to 8000) and it will be operational at the start-up of the LHC. In addition to heavy systems, the ALICE Collaboration will study collisions of lower-mass ions, which are a means of varying the energy density, and protons (both pp and pA), which primarily provide reference data for the nucleus–nucleus collisions. In addition, the pp data will allow for a number of genuine pp physics studies.The detailed design of the different detector systems has been laid down in a number of Technical Design Reports issued between mid-1998 and the end of 2004. The experiment is currently under construction and will be ready for data taking with both proton and heavy-ion beams at the start-up of the LHC.Since the comprehensive information on detector and physics performance was last published in the ALICE Technical Proposal in 1996, the detector, as well as simulation, reconstruction and analysis software have undergone significant development. The Physics Performance Report (PPR) provides an updated and comprehensive summary of the performance of the various ALICE subsystems, including updates to the Technical Design Reports, as appropriate.The PPR is divided into two volumes. Volume I, published in 2004 (CERN/LHCC 2003-049, ALICE Collaboration 2004 J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 30 1517–1763), contains in four chapters a short theoretical overview and an extensive reference list concerning the physics topics of interest to ALICE, the experimental conditions at the LHC, a short summary and update of the subsystem designs, and a description of the offline framework and Monte Carlo event generators.The present volume, Volume II, contains the majority of the information relevant to the physics performance in proton–proton, proton–nucleus, and nucleus–nucleus collisions. Following an introductory overview, Chapter 5 describes the combined detector performance and the event reconstruction procedures, based on detailed simulations of the individual subsystems. Chapter 6 describes the analysis and physics reach for a representative sample of physics observables, from global event characteristics to hard processes.

The upcoming 50 kt magnetized iron calorimeter (ICAL) detector at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is designed to study the atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos separately over a wide range of energies and path lengths. The primary focus of this experiment is to explore the Earth matter effects by observing the energy and zenith angle dependence of the atmospheric neutrinos in the multi-GeV range. This study will be crucial to address some of the outstanding issues in neutrino oscillation physics, including the fundamental issue of neutrino mass hierarchy. In this document, we present the physics potential of the detector as obtained from realistic detector simulations. We describe the simulation framework, the neutrino interactions in the detector, and the expected response of the detector to particles traversing it. The ICAL detector can determine the energy and direction of the muons to a high precision, and in addition, its sensitivity to multi-GeV hadrons increases its physics reach substantially. Its charge identification capability, and hence its ability to distinguish neutrinos from antineutrinos, makes it an efficient detector for determining the neutrino mass hierarchy. In this report, we outline the analyses carried out for the determination of neutrino mass hierarchy and precision measurements of atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters at ICAL, and give the expected physics reach of the detector with 10 years of runtime. We also explore the potential of ICAL for probing new physics scenarios like CPT violation and the presence of magnetic monopoles. v Physics Potential of ICAL at INO vi PrefaceThe past two decades in neutrino physics have been very eventful, and have established this field as one of the flourishing areas of high energy physics. Starting from the confirmation of neutrino oscillations that resolved the decades-old problems of the solar and atmospheric neutrinos, we have now been able to show that neutrinos have nonzero masses, and different flavors of neutrinos mix among themselves. Our understanding of neutrino properties has increased by leaps and bounds. Many experiments have been constructed and envisaged to explore different facets of neutrinos, in particular their masses and mixing.The Iron Calorimeter (ICAL) experiment at the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) [1] is one of the major detectors that is expected to see the light of the day soon. It will have unique features like the ability to distinguish muon neutrinos from antineutrinos at GeV energies, and measure the energies of hadrons in the same energy range. It is therefore well suited for the identification of neutrino mass hierarchy, the measurement of neutrino mixing parameters, and many probes of new physics. The site for the INO has been identified, and the construction is expected to start soon. In the meanwhile, the R&D for the ICAL detector, including the design of its modules, the magnet coils, the active detector elements and the associated electronics, has been underway over the past deca...

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The occurrence of intermittent patterns in 14.5 A GeV/c 28 Si -nucleus interactions is examined in terms of Scaled Factorial Moments (SFMs), introduced by Bialas and Peschanski. Further, to examine the dependence of various interesting characteristics of SFMs on incident energy, the data on 4.5 A GeV/c 28 Si -nucleus collisions available in our laboratory are analyzed. Interestingly, log-log plots between rapidity interval δη and the qth order factorial moment Fq for both the energies exhibit linear behavior indicating thereby the presence of intermittency in the interactions investigated. Moreover, to look at the fractal nature of the particle emitting sources, variation of the fractal dimensions, dq with the order of the moment is investigated. Finally, study of the variation of λq [=(ϕq+1)/q)] with the order of the moment, q indicates a possibility of non-thermal phase transition in certain types of events

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Significance of entropy, S, for explaining multiparticle production phenomenon in high energy nucleus–nucleus collisions is highlighted. For this, experimental data on 4.5A and 14.5A GeV/c 28 Si -nucleus interactions are analyzed. An attempt is also made to explain the phenomenon using HIJING simulated interactions. Entropy is calculated for different classes of interactions. The plots of [Formula: see text] against [Formula: see text] for different categories of interactions reveal scaling behavior.

Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) is a parallel plate gaseous detector built using electrodes of high volume resistivity. Operation and performance of the RPCs crucially depends upon the conductive coating on the outer side of the electrodes. Therefore, it is imperative to study in detail the effect of the surface resistivity of the electrodes' coating on RPC characteristics and performance. In this report, the effects of surface resistivity of conductive coating on the spatial dispersion of the induced charge by the three fabricated prototype RPCs with surface resistivities of 1 MΩ/ , 100 kΩ/ , 40 kΩ/ were studied experimentally. A double-Gaussian function was used to fit the dispersion of the induced charge of the RPC. It is shown that the Gaussian distribution with the narrower width is due to the spread of the avalanche charge in the gas gap of the RPC and that of larger width is due to diffusion of charge as it passes through the resistive coat film. Effect of resistivity on other RPC detector parameters such as efficiency, noise rate and strip-multiplicity is also reported.