Illinois Mobile App Master Calendar

Only a small fraction of the collisions between ultra-relativistic heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) involve direct strong interactions between the nucleons of the colliding nuclei. In most cases, the nuclei interact via their electromagnetic fields in so-called ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs), which produce an abundant rate of photon–nucleus and photon–photon collisions at the highest center-of-mass energies achievable at colliders. In this seminar, I will highlight how photon–nucleus events in UPCs can serve as a novel tool to probe the dynamics of gluons and quarks in nuclei, particularly in the small Bjorken-x regime. I will discuss recent experimental advances that have transformed the CMS detector into a high-performance instrument for studying heavy-flavor and jet production in UPCs. The seminar will present results from the first measurements of open-charm production in UPCs and provide an outlook for future analyses at the LHC in Run 3 and Run 4. The prospects for analogous measurements in electron-proton and electron-ion collisions at the Electron Ion Collider will also be discussed.