ALICE gets the green light for new subdetectors
Two detector upgrades of ALICE, the dedicated heavy-ion physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have recently been approved for installation during the next long shutdown of the LHC, which will take place from 2026 to 2028. The first one is an upgrade of the innermost three layers of the Inner Tracking System (ITS3), and the second is a new forward calorimeter (FoCal), optimised for photon detection in the forward direction of the ALICE detector. High-energy collisions of heavy ions like lead nuclei at the LHC recreate quark–gluon plasma: the hottest and densest fluid ever st...