Heavy Ion Physics at the LHC

Authors: P. Giubellino

(Submitted on 5 Sep 2008)

Abstract: The first Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC are little more than a year away. This paper discusses some of the exciting measurements which the experiments will be able to perform in the very first run, even with modest luminosity, and gives a very short overview of some of the most interesting ones attainable with more extended runs.

The dedicated Heavy-Ion experiment ALICE, but also ATLAS and CMS, experiments optimized for p-p collisions, are ready and eager to make best use of the nuclear beams in the LHC as soon as they will be available. The main specificities of the three detectors for Heavy-Ion collisions will also be briefly addressed in this paper. I will try to show that already the first results obtainable with Heavy-Ion beams at the LHC will qualify it as a discovery machine, capable to provide fundamental new insight to our knowledge of high-density QCD matter.

Comments: Invited talk at the Hadron Collider Physics Symposium (HCP2008), Galena, Illinois, USA, May 27-31, 2008; 9 pages, .docx file

Subjects: Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex)

Cite as: arXiv:0809.1062v1 [nucl-ex]

Submission history

From: Paolo Giubellino [view email]

[v1] Fri, 5 Sep 2008 16:43:38 GMT (439kb,X)

http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.1062