The future heavy ion experiment ALICE at the LHC at CERN

Abstract The Large Hadron Collider(LHC) under construction at CERN is also planned as a heavy ion colliderwith lead ions collidingat an energy of (2.75 + 2.75) · 208 · TeV. This corresponds to collisionsof matter with cosmic rays of the highest energies observed so far promising the study of new and exciting aspects of physics. Minor improvements of the lead ion source at the CERN SPS are necessary in order to provide a luminosity of L = 10 27 cm −2 s −1 . The detector ALICE has been chosen as the third detector for the LHC and will be dedicated to the physics of these nuclear collisions, In addition to the heaviest system (Pb-Pb), collisionsof lower mass ions are foreseen as a means to study collisionsat different energy density and proton-nucleus (p-A) collisionsprovide indispensable reference datafor the A-A collisions.