Minimum bias trigger for pp physics with ALICE

Abstract

ALICE will measure the properties of strongly interacting matter created in heavy-ion collisions. In addition, taking advantage of the low p t acceptance in the central barrel, ALICE will play an important role in understanding pp collisions with minimum bias triggers at LHC energies. The proposed minimum bias trigger is sensitive to about 90% of the total inelastic cross section and 99% of the non-diffractive cross section. A procedure to calculate the trigger efficiency and an estimate of the systematic uncertainty due to the limited acceptance of the detector are presented.