Session X12: Invited Session: Forefront Nuclear and Particle Physics

Perspectives of the ALICE Experiment and Detector Upgrade

The primary goal of ALICE at the CERN-LHC is to study the structure of the QCD phase diagram at extremely high temperature and very large energy density. In particular, ALICE focuses on the properties of the hot and dense matter created in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. The ALICE experiment features tracking to low transverse momentum (down to 150 MeV/c), as well as a variety of particle identification techniques and jet identification. After the LS2 (2018-19 Long Shutdown), ALICE will focus on rare probes, such as heavy-flavors, quarkonia, photons and jets with improved performance, thanks to the detector upgrade which will further strengthen the physics potential of the experiment. The long-term strategy of the ALICE upgrade is to fully exploit high luminosity provided by the LHC after the LS2, and to collect 10 nb$^{\mathrm{-1}}$ at the maximum collision rate of 50 kHz (Pb-Pb luminosity $L \quad =$ 6 x 10$^{\mathrm{27\thinspace }}$cm$^{\mathrm{-2\thinspace }}$s$^{\mathrm{-2}})$ in order to carry out the precision measurements on a large variety of probes such as heavy flavour, charmonia and dielectrons. In this talk, we present a review of the ALICE detector and highlights of the current physics program. Then we will discuss the limitations of existing measures and the prospects for physical measurements with the upgrade.   

Meson Spectroscopy at Jefferson Lab

The goal of meson spectroscopy experiments is to provide crucial data to help understand the binding of quarks and gluons into hadrons. The production of hybrid mesons, and in particular exotic hybrid mesons at intermediate energies, will provide an ideal laboratory for testing these strong interactions (QCD) effects. Hybrid mesons explicitly manifest the gluonic degrees of freedom. Photoproduction is expected to be effective in producing these exotic hybrids but there is little data on the photoproduction of light mesons. Photoproduction experiments at Jefferson Lab have already made some exploratory studies in this regime. Two new experiments, GlueX (in Hall D) and CLAS12 (in Hall B), will use the new 12-GeV electron beam to extend these measurements to higher meson masses and to collect very large statistics. GlueX will use a 9-GeV beam of linearly polarized photons using the technique of coherent bremsstrahlung. CLAS12 will use quasi-real photoproduction at equivalent energies and polarizations (very low Q2 electron scattering). The new data will exceed by several orders of magnitude all previously obtained photoproduction data at those energies. This talk will give an update on the already obtained data and on the preparations for the new experiments, as well as briefly delineate theoretical developments to help understand and analyze how these data can provide insights into the fundamental theory of strong interactions.   

Searches for New Physics at the LHC, Current Status and Future Prospects

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is scheduled to resume operation in 2015, delivering higher energy collisions and an opportunity for new discoveries.~The ATLAS and CMS experiments will analyze the LHC collisions with the goal of detecting~deviations from the Standard Model~and determining how to explain them.~This talk presents an~overview of the experimental techniques to search for new physics at the LHC, as well as perspectives on what we expect to learn from the future LHC data.~