Future high pp programme with ALICE

This document presents the proposal of the ALICE Collaboration for an extended data taking programme with high-energy proton–proton collisions (√s ≈ 13–14 TeV). The proposed programme includes two components: a sample with a target integrated luminosity of about 200 pb−1, for which a highly-selective software-based event skimming will be performed after data reconstruction, and a minimum bias sample with a target integrated luminosity of about 3 pb−1. The first sample targets several physics topics based on the selection of rare events, in particular with very high particle multiplicity or diffractive topologies, and/or rare signals, ranging from light nuclei and hyperons to heavy-quark hadrons and jets. The data processing and selection strategy exploits the new online–offline computing framework that is being prepared to process the Pb–Pb data samples. The second sample will be recorded with a reduced value of the ALICE solenoid magnetic field (0.2 T) and will be devoted to high-precision studies of low-mass dielectron pairs.