[en] We report on work done in collaboration with Klaus Kinder-Geiger and John Ellis which aims at connecting the space-time structure of event generator simulations with observable output

[en] ALICE is a general-purpose heavy-ion experiment designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter and the quark-gluon plasma in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC. It currently includes more than 900 physicists and senior engineers, from both nuclear and high-energy physics, from about 80 institutions in 28 countries. The experiment was approved in February 1997. The detailed design of the different detector systems has been laid down in a number of Technical Design Reports issued between mid-1998 and the end of 2001 and construction has started for most detectors. Since the last comprehensive information on detector and physics performance was published in the ALICE Technical Proposal in 1996, the detector as well as simulation, reconstruction and analysis software have undergone significant development. The Physics Performance Report (PPR) will give an updated and comprehensive summary of the current status and performance of the various ALICE subsystems, including updates to the Technical Design Reports, where appropriate, as well as a description of systems which have not been published in a Technical Design Report. The PPR will be published in two volumes. The current Volume I contains: 1. a short theoretical overview and an extensive reference list concerning the physics topics of interest to ALICE,; 2. relevant experimental conditions at the LHC,; 3. a short summary and update of the subsystem designs, and; 4. a description of the offline framework and Monte Carlo generators. Volume II, which will be published separately, will contain detailed simulations of combined detector performance, event reconstruction, and analysis of a representative sample of relevant physics observables from global event characteristics to hard processes

[en] A new treatment of Bose-Einstein correlations is incorporated in a space-time parton-shower model for e⁺e^- annihilation into hadrons. Two alternative algorithms are discussed, and we use a simple calculable model to demonstrate that they reproduce successfully the size of the hadron emission region. One of the algorithms is used to calculate two-pion correlations in e⁺e^-→Z⁰→hadrons and e⁺e^-→W⁺W^-→hadrons. Results are shown with and without resonance decays, for correlations along and transverse to the thrust jet axis in these two classes of events. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society

[en] We present our recent studies of the medium-induced radiative energy loss of heavy quarks and its experimental signatures in heavy ion collisions. In particular, we discuss the ratio of nuclear modification factors of high-p_T heavy-flavoured mesons to light-flavoured hadrons (heavy-to-light ratio). Depending on the transverse momentum of the heavy quark, this ratio turns out to be sensitive either to the mass-dependence or to the colour charge dependence expected for radiative parton energy loss. Based on this observation, we show how the simultaneous analysis of D and B mesons at the LHC in the region 10 < p_T < 20 GeV allows one to disentangle the dependence of parton energy loss on parton identity. We then discuss to what extent high-p_T electron spectra, expected to be dominated by heavy quark decay contributions, can give access to the microscopic mechanism underlying parton energy loss

[en] The attenuation of heavy-flavored particles in nucleus-nucleus collisions tests the microscopic dynamics of medium-induced parton energy loss and, in particular, its expected dependence on the identity (color charge and mass) of the parent parton. We discuss the comparison of theoretical calculations with recent single-electron data from RHIC experiments. Then, we present predictions for the heavy-to-light ratios of D and B mesons at LHC energy