Feasibility studies of event-by-event direct photon measurements in Pb-Pb collisions in the ALICE experiment

• Grant number: 16/10995-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2016
• End date: July 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics - Nuclear Physics
• Principal Investigator: Mauro Rogerio Cosentino
• Grantee: Carolina Sergi Lopes
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas (CCNH). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and most powerful particle collider ever built. It is placed 100m underground in the accelerator complex of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland and has four main experiments: ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ALICE, each of which focusing in different aspects of high energy physics research. The LHC delivers collisions of different systems, such as proton-proton (pp, the main program), proton-lead (p-Pb) and (Pb-Pb), being the last two of higher interest to the heavy ion physics community. This project aims to make data analysis of the ALICE collaboration, which the main goal is to investigate matter under extreme conditions in order to understand the state know as the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP). One of the most remarkable observables of the QGP is its anisotropic flow after heavy ion collisions. One of the most common methods to characterize it can have, according to recent studies, been disconsidering a lot of data relevant to the comprehension of the QGP evolution and the medium initial conditions. For this purpose, an event-by-event analysis of the Fourier harmonics that represents the particle's azimuthal distribution was created. The proposed work will analyse the feasibility of the method that calculates direct $\gamma$ harmonics in an event-by-event basis in Pb-Pb collisions via simulations. The obtainment of these values can give informations about the instant that the photons were produced in the collision and consequently characteristics about the QGP's evolution. (AU)