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Physics Colloquium: Collisions of light at the LHC: Photonuclear and photon-photon physics with heavy ions in ATLAS

Event Type
Seminar/Symposium
Sponsor
Department of Physics
Date
Oct 27, 2021   4:00 pm  
Speaker
Peter Steinberg, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Contact
Marjoire Gamel
E-Mail
mgamel@illinois.edu
Phone
217-333-3762
Views
73
Originating Calendar
Physics - Colloquium

The heavy ion programs at RHIC (at Brookhaven National Laboratory) and the LHC (at CERN) have been primarily focused on creating and studying the hot, dense matter formed when heavy nuclei collide at ultrarelativistic energies.  However, a new program has emerged from all the LHC experiments in Run 2, taking advantage of the very strong electromagnetic (EM) fields surrounding each nucleus.  These act as a source of high-energy nearly-real photons that can interact both with the other nucleus (photonuclear processes) and with oncoming photons from the other nucleus (photon-photon processes).  Photonuclear processes probe the partonic structure of nuclei but also provide an interesting way to study collectivity in a compact hadronic system complementary to previous studies of proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC.  Photon-photon processes are amenable to precise QED predictions, and both exclusive lepton pair production as well as direct light-by-light scattering have now been observed, the latter offering a new sensitive laboratory for physics beyond the Standard Model.  Recent results from ATLAS on these processes will be shown, and prospects for this physics from LHC Runs 3 and 4 will be discussed, as well as how these measurements may help inform the physics program of the upcoming Electron-Ion Collider at Brookhaven.

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