PhD Research Fellow in Experimental Heavy-Ion Physics (ref 257207)

The high-energy heavy-ion collisions group from the Department of Physics, University of Oslo, participates in the ALICE experiment, one of the four big experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. In 2022 the LHC started the third round of data taking with ultra-relativistic proton-proton (pp), proton-lead (p-Pb) and lead-lead (Pb-Pb) collisions (LHC Run 3). The ALICE experiment had its main upgrades installed for the Run 3 and 4 data taking, which includes greatly improved tracking precision, readout speed and software. These upgrades enable ALICE to record about 100 times more Pb-Pb and about 1000 times more pp collision events compared to the previous data taking campaigns. These will allow precision measurements of rare probes such as heavy quarkonia, charm and beauty hadrons down to very low momentum, heavy-flavour tagged jets, photo-nuclear and photon-photon interactions in ultra-peripheral collisions, etc.

The physics aims of our group are the application of these probes for the characterization of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in nuclear collisions at relativistic energies, and the search for gluon saturation at low Bjorken-x, a fundamental phenomenon predicted by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong nuclear force.

The ALICE group at the University of Oslo, together with the other Norwegian heavy-ion physics groups are involved in high impact physics data analysis, interpretation and phenomenology, analysis software development and ALICE detector upgrades. The physics analyses focus mainly on the heavy quarkonia and beauty meson production in Pb-Pb and pp collisions plus the photoproduction of vector mesons in ultra-peripheral and peripheral collisions.

The group has a leading role in the development of analysis software and in simulations for the ALICE Forward Calorimeter (FoCal) detector upgrade to be installed in ALICE before the LHC Run 4. The group also foresees joining the ALICE3 project which aims at building a completely new detector to replace the current ALICE detector for the LHC Run 5 and 6.

The main PhD topic for the successful candidate is to carry out physics analysis within the above mentioned areas of research using the Run 3 data. It is highly desirable that the candidate also will be involved in the FoCal or ALICE3 projects by contributing to the simulation or reconstruction software development efforts.

For more information and how to apply: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/257207/phd-research-fellow-in-experimental-heavy-ion-physics