Once a year, the ALICE collaboration awards a prize to the best PhD thesis based on the excellence of the results obtained, the quality of the thesis manuscript and the importance of the contribution to the collaboration.
The quality of all of the theses examined by the selection board in 2021 was excellent, but the committee unanimously decided to honour Jonatan Adolfsson, from Lund University, for his thesis work “Study of Ξ-Hadron Correlations in pp Collisions at √s = 13 TeV Using the ALICE Detector”. The prize was awarded in a dedicated session of the ALICE Week, on Monday, 28 June. Jonatan was congratulated by ALICE Spokesperson Luciano Musa, who presented the award, Collaboration Board Chair Silvia Masciocchi and the Chairs of the Thesis Committee, Giuseppe Bruno and Philippe Crochet. Jonatan then gave a flash presentation on his thesis.
Through the work for his thesis, Jonatan contributed to the first measurements of anisotropic flow coefficients in Xe–Xe collisions at √sNN = 5.44 TeV using the method of multi-particle cumulants (Phys. Lett. B784 (2018) 82). His work focused on the mechanisms behind the strangeness enhancement, one of the historical signatures of the quark–gluon plasma. Jonatan developed a new strategy for studying the angular correlation between the Ξ hyperon and a variety of hadrons: pions, kaons, protons, lambda and the Ξ itself. In addition, he was
responsible for important tests of the SAMPA electronics readout chips, used for the ALICE TPC and Muon Chamber upgrades for the LHC’s Run 3 and beyond.
You can read Jonatan’s thesis here.