Aliases, as already mentioned, are pointers to cmdlets. Using New-Alias, you create a pointer with a custom name, that points to the desired PowerShell cmdlet. This is simply a Name–Value pair.

When you run anything on PowerShell, PowerShell checks its list of cmdlets and aliases (among other definitions) to understand what you are asking for. When PowerShell encounters an alias, it looks for which cmdlet it points to, and runs the cmdlet.