Physics perspectives of the ALICE experiment at the large hadron collider

The large hadron collider (LHC) under construction at CERN will deliver ion beams up to centre of mass energies of the order of 5.5 TeV per nucleon, in case of lead. If compared to the available facilities for the study of nucleus-nucleus collisions (SPS and RHIC), this represents a huge step forward in terms of both volume and energy density that can be attained in nuclear interactions. ALICE (a large ion collider experiment) is the only detector specifically designed for the physics of nuclear collisions at LHC, even though it can also study high cross-section processes occurring in proton-proton collisions. The main goal of the experiment is to observe and study the phase transition from hadronic matter to deconfinement partonic matter (quark gluon plasma - QGP). ALICE is conceived as a general purpose detector and will address most of the phenomena related to the QGP formation at LHC energies: for this purpose, a large fraction of the hadrons, leptons and photons produced in each interaction will be measured and identified. (author)