Graduate School in Physics and Astrophysics ------------------------------------------- ANNUAL REPORT ------------------------------------------- Fill with a text editor (without TAB or formatting) Repeat fields for each course as necessary. ------------------------------------------- name: Silvia Delsanto email: silvia.delsanto@cern.ch ciclo: XXXIII cycle year completed (1,2 or 3): 3 Supervisor for “Università degli Studi di Torino”: Prof. Ermanno Vercellin (ermanno.vercellin@unito.it) Supervisor for “University of Witswatersrand”: Pof. ZZ Vilakazi (Zeblon.Vilakazi@wits.ac.za) Supervisor for “University of Witswatersrand and iThemba LABS”: Ass. Prof. Z Buthelezi (zinhle@tlabs.ac.za) ------------------------------------------- CONFERENCES, WORKSHOP (only those attended in the current year) Title: Conference on Flavour Physics and CP violation 2020 (8-12 June) place: A toxa (Spain)-remote mode webpage: https://indico.cern.ch/event/656452/ days: 8-12 June 2020 talk (Y/N): Y Plenary talked titled:"Enhanced production of multi-strange hadrons in high-multiplicity proton-proton collisions" poster (Y/N): N Main meetings where I presented my work and the approval of my analysis was discussed: PWG-LF meetings https://indico.cern.ch/event/894937/ Paper proposal https://indico.cern.ch/event/958944/ Approval session https://indico.cern.ch/event/894934/ Preview session ALICE Physics Forum https://indico.cern.ch/event/905008/ Spring Previews https://indico.cern.ch/event/913249/ Spring Approval https://indico.cern.ch/event/950033/ Paper proposal --------------------------------------------------- Research activity/Publications in the current year (max characters 2500) My PhD is being carried out in co-tutorship between the University of Witswatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), iThemba LABS (Cape Town, South Africa) and Università degli Studi di Torino. I completed the 18 months that I had to spend in Cape Town and I moved back to Turin at end of February 2020. The third year of my PhD is mainly focused on the conclusion of my physics data analysis. The topic is multiplicity dependence of the production of primary strange, so called V0s (Koan-0 short, Lambda, Anti-Lambda) and multi-strange, so called cascades (Xi Minus, Xi Plus, Omega Minus and Omega Plus) hadrons in proton-proton (pp) collisions at the center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV in ALICE at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A strangeness enhanced production was observed in heavy-ion collisions and originally proposed as a signature of the formation of the quark gluon plasma. But recent observations by the ALICE Collaboration revealed an enhanced production of strange particles also in high-multiplicity pp and proton-lead (p-Pb) collisions at the LHC. So, studies in pp collisions are crucial to help to understand the small systems behavior and the microscopic formation of strangeness, which is still unknown. Particles are identified using the invariant mass spectra reconstructed by applying kinematical, geometrical and topological cuts, evaluated per given charged-particle multiplicity class as well at transverse momentum (pT) range. The pT spectra are extracted and used to obtain the final results: pT-integrated yield and mean pT as a function of multiplicity. Finally, they are compared with the previous analyses results in pp collisions at the center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 13 TeV. The study is divided into V0s and Cascades analyses. Since September 2019 I focused my work on Cascades. The progression of the study has been reported and closely monitored by the ALICE Physics Analysis Group Strangeness and ALICE Physics Working Group - Light Flavour (PWG-LF). Moreover, cascades analysis was approved during the spring approval session (April-May 2020) and I presented my results during a plenary talk on invitation at the Conference on Flavour Physics and CP violation 2020 (8-12 June) that took place in remote mode. After the conference, I dedicated my work on concluding also the V0s analysis. A Paper proposal where the two analyses converge, was accepted on 28 September 2020 during a PWG-LF dedicated session and publication is expected in the next few months. Exams and PhD school: * Data Analysis Techniques (6 CFU) * Fitting and Statistical tools (4 CFU) * The hunt of the Physics Beyond the Standard Model course (3 CFU) * Introduction to the Physics of the Quark Gluon Plasma (5 cfu)