We report the first measurement of the net-charge fluctuations in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV, measured with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The dynamical fluctuations per unit entropy are observed to decrease when going from peripheral to central collisions. An additional reduction in the amount of fluctuations is seen in comparison to the results from lower energies. We examine the dependence of fluctuations on the pseudorapidity interval, which may account for the dilution of fluctuations during the evolution of the system. We find that the fluctuations at LHC are smaller compared to the measurements at the Relativistic heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and as such, closer to what has been theoretically predicted for the formation of Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP).

We report the first measurement of charged particle elliptic flow in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is performed in the central pseudorapidity region (|$\eta$|<0.8) and transverse momentum range 0.2< $p_{\rm T}$< 5.0 GeV/$c$. The elliptic flow signal v$_2$, measured using the 4-particle correlation method, averaged over transverse momentum and pseudorapidity is 0.087 $\pm$ 0.002 (stat) $\pm$ 0.004 (syst) in the 40-50% centrality class. The differential elliptic flow v$_2(p_{\rm T})$ reaches a maximum of 0.2 near $p_{\rm T}$ = 3 GeV/$c$. Compared to RHIC Au-Au collisions at 200 GeV, the elliptic flow increases by about 30%. Some hydrodynamic model predictions which include viscous corrections are in agreement with the observed increase.

A measurement of the transverse momentum spectra of jets in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV is reported. Jets are reconstructed from charged particles using the anti-$k_{\rm T}$ jet algorithm with jet resolution parameters $R$ of $0.2$ and $0.3$ in pseudo-rapidity $|\eta|<0.5$. The transverse momentum $p_{\rm T}$ of charged particles is measured down to $0.15$ GeV/$c$ which gives access to the low $p_{\rm T}$ fragments of the jet. Jets found in heavy-ion collisions are corrected event-by-event for average background density and on an inclusive basis (via unfolding) for residual background fluctuations and detector effects. A strong suppression of jet production in central events with respect to peripheral events is observed. The suppression is found to be similar to the suppression of charged hadrons, which suggests that substantial energy is radiated at angles larger than the jet resolution parameter $R=0.3$ considered in the analysis. The fragmentation bias introduced by selecting jets with a high $p_{\rm T}$ leading particle, which rejects jets with a soft fragmentation pattern, has a similar effect on the jet yield for central and peripheral events. The ratio of jet spectra with $R=0.2$ and $R=0.3$ is found to be similar in Pb-Pb and simulated PYTHIA pp events, indicating no strong broadening of the radial jet structure in the reconstructed jets with $R<0.3$.

This publication describes the methods used to measure the centrality of inelastic Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV per colliding nucleon pair with ALICE. The centrality is a key parameter in the study of the properties of QCD matter at extreme temperature and energy density, because it is directly related to the initial overlap region of the colliding nuclei. Geometrical properties of the collision, such as the number of participating nucleons and number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions, are deduced from a Glauber model with a sharp impact parameter selection, and shown to be consistent with those extracted from the data. The centrality determination provides a tool to compare ALICE measurements with those of other experiments and with theoretical calculations.

We report the first results of elliptic ($v_2$), triangular ($v_3$) and quadrangular flow ($v_4$) of charged particles in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=5.02$ TeV with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurements are performed in the central pseudorapidity region $|\eta|<0.8$ and for the transverse momentum range $0.2<p_{\rm T}<5$ GeV/$c$. The anisotropic flow is measured using two-particle correlations with a pseudorapidity gap greater than one unit and with the multi-particle cumulant method. Compared to results from Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV, the anisotropic flow coefficients $v_{2}$, $v_{3}$ and $v_{4}$ are found to increase by ($3.0\pm0.6$)%, ($4.3\pm1.4$)% and ($10.2\pm3.8$)%, respectively, in the centrality range 0-50%. This increase can be attributed mostly to an increase of the average transverse momentum between the two energies. The measurements are found to be compatible with hydrodynamic model calculations. This comparison provides a unique opportunity to test the validity of the hydrodynamic picture and the power to further discriminate between various possibilities for the temperature dependence of shear viscosity to entropy density ratio of the produced matter in heavy-ion collisions at the highest energies.

We report the transverse energy ($E_{\mathrm T}$) measured with ALICE at midrapidity in Pb-Pb collisions at ${\sqrt{s_{\mathrm {NN}}}}$ = 2.76 TeV as a function of centrality. The transverse energy was measured using identified single particle tracks. The measurement was cross checked using the electromagnetic calorimeters and the transverse momentum distributions of identified particles previously reported by ALICE. The results are compared to theoretical models as well as to results from other experiments. The mean $E_{\mathrm T}$ per unit pseudorapidity ($\eta$), $\langle $d$E_{\mathrm T}/$d$\eta \rangle$, in 0-5% central collisions is 1737 $\pm$ 6(stat.) $\pm$ 97(sys.) GeV. We find a similar centrality dependence of the shape of $\langle $d$E_{\mathrm T}/$d$\eta \rangle$ as a function of the number of participating nucleons to that seen at lower energies. The growth in $\langle $d$E_{\mathrm T}/$d$\eta \rangle$ at the LHC ${\sqrt{s_{\mathrm {NN}}}}$ exceeds extrapolations of low energy data. We observe a nearly linear scaling of $\langle $d$E_{\mathrm T}/$d$\eta \rangle$ with the number of quark participants. With the canonical assumption of a 1 fm/$c$ formation time, we estimate that the energy density in 0-5% central Pb-Pb collisions at ${\sqrt{s_{\mathrm {NN}}}}$ = 2.76 TeV is 12.3 $\pm$ 1.0 GeV/fm$^3$\xspace and that the energy density at the most central 80 fm$^2$ of the collision is at least 21.5 $\pm$ 1.7 GeV/fm$^3$. This is roughly 2.3 times that observed in 0-5% central Au-Au collisions at ${\sqrt{s_{\mathrm {NN}}}}$ = 200 GeV.

We present measurements of two-particle correlations with neutral pion trigger particles of transverse momenta $8 < p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\rm trig} < 16~\mathrm{GeV}/c$ and associated charged particles of $0.5 < p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\rm assoc} < 10~\mathrm{GeV}/c$ versus the azimuthal angle difference $\Delta\varphi$ at midrapidity in pp and central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=2.76$ TeV with ALICE. The new measurements exploit associated charged hadrons down to $0.5~\mathrm{GeV}/c$, which significantly extends our previous measurement that only used charged hadrons above $3~\mathrm{GeV}/c$. After subtracting the contributions of the flow background, $v_2$ to $v_5$, the per-trigger yields are extracted for $|\Delta\varphi|<0.7$ on the near and for $|\Delta\varphi-\pi| < 1.1$ on the away side. The ratio of per-trigger yields in Pb--Pb to those in pp collisions, $I_{\mathrm{AA}}$, is measured on the near and away side for the $0$--$10$\% most central Pb--Pb collisions. On the away side, the per-trigger yields in Pb--Pb are strongly suppressed to the level of $I_{\mathrm{AA}} \approx 0.6$ for $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\rm assoc} > 3~\mathrm{GeV}/c$, while with decreasing momenta an enhancement develops reaching about $5$ at low $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\rm assoc}$. On the near side, an enhancement of $I_{\mathrm{AA}}$ between $1.2$ at the highest to $1.8$ at the lowest $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\rm assoc}$ is observed. The data are compared to parton-energy-loss predictions of the JEWEL and AMPT event generators, as well as to a perturbative QCD calculation with medium-modified fragmentation functions. All calculations qualitatively describe the away-side suppression at high $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\rm assoc}$. Only AMPT captures the enhancement at low $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\rm assoc}$, both on the near and away side. However, it also underpredicts $I_{\mathrm{AA}}$ above $5$ GeV/$c$, in particular on the near-side.

The average transverse momentum $\langle p_{\rm T}\rangle$ versus the charged-particle multiplicity $N_{\rm ch}$ was measured in p-Pb collisions at a collision energy per nucleon-nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=5.02$ TeV and in pp collisions at collision energies of $\sqrt{s}=0.9$, 2.76, and 7 TeV in the kinematic range $0.15<p_{\rm T}<10.0$ GeV/$c$ and $|\eta|<0.3$ with the ALICE apparatus at the LHC. These data are compared to results in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV at similar charged-particle multiplicities. In pp and p-Pb collisions, a strong increase of $\langle p_{\rm T}\rangle$ with $N_{\rm ch}$ is observed, which is much stronger than that measured in Pb-Pb collisions. For pp collisions, this could be attributed, within a model of hadronizing strings, to multiple-parton interactions and to a final-state color reconnection mechanism. The data in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions cannot be described by an incoherent superposition of nucleon-nucleon collisions and pose a challenge to most of the event generators.

We report on the first measurement of the triangular $v_3$, quadrangular $v_4$, and pentagonal $v_5$ charged particle flow in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV measured with the ALICE detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We show that the triangular flow can be described in terms of the initial spatial anisotropy and its fluctuations, which provides strong constraints on its origin. In the most central events, where the elliptic flow $v_2$ and $v_3$ have similar magnitude, a double peaked structure in the two-particle azimuthal correlations is observed, which is often interpreted as a Mach cone response to fast partons. We show that this structure can be naturally explained from the measured anisotropic flow Fourier coefficients.

We report the measurements of correlations between event-by-event fluctuations of amplitudes of anisotropic flow harmonics in nucleus-nucleus collisions, obtained for the first time using a new analysis method based on multiparticle cumulants in mixed harmonics. This novel method is robust against systematic biases originating from non-flow effects and by construction any dependence on symmetry planes is eliminated. We demonstrate that correlations of flow harmonics exhibit a better sensitivity to medium properties than the individual flow harmonics. The new measurements are performed in Pb-Pb collisions at the centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of $\sqrt{s_{_{\rm NN}}}=2.76$ TeV by the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The centrality dependence of correlation between event-by-event fluctuations of the elliptic, $v_2$, and quadrangular, $v_4$, flow harmonics, as well as of anti-correlation between $v_2$ and triangular, $v_3$, flow harmonics are presented. The results cover two different regimes of the initial state configurations: geometry-dominated (in mid-central collisions) and fluctuation-dominated (in the most central collisions). Comparisons are made to predictions from MC-Glauber, viscous hydrodynamics, AMPT and HIJING models. Together with the existing measurements of individual flow harmonics the presented results provide further constraints on initial conditions and the transport properties of the system produced in heavy-ion collisions.