Pseudorapidity density of charged particles and its centrality dependence in Pb–Pb collisions at image

We present the measurement of the charged-particle pseudorapidity (η) density distribution, image, for a number of centrality bins in Pb–Pb collisions at image over a wide pseudorapidity range. Using the innermost pixel layers of the ALICE tracking system and the ALICE forward detectors (VZERO and FMD), we cover the pseudorapidity range: image. The analysis is performed using a dedicated technique utilizing the collisions with LHC ‘satellite’ bunches. These collisions have displaced vertices in the range image. The resulting distributions allow for an estimate of the total number of produced charged particles, image, in Pb–Pb collisions at the LHC energy.