ALICE Muon Spectrometer

Hard, penetrating probes, such as heavy quarkonium states, provide an essential tool to study the early and hot stage of heavy-ions collisions. In particular they are expected to be sensitive to Quark-Gluon Plasma formation. In the presence of a deconfined medium (i.e. QGP) with high enough energy density, quarkonium states are dissociated because of colour screening. This leads to a suppression of their production rates.