1998/10/20 by Gerhard Baur, G. Baur, Kai Hencken +5
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-ph/9810418
15 pages, to appear in "Proceedings of the Lund workshop on photon interactions and the photon structure, Lund, September 10-13, 1998", edited by G. Jarlskog and T. Sjostrand
arxiv created 1998/10/20 · openalex publication_date 1998/10/20 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In central collisions at relativistic heavy ion colliders like the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider RHIC/Brookhaven and the Large Hadron Collider LHC (in its heavy ion mode) at CERN/Geneva, one aims at detecting a new form of hadronic matter - the Quark Gluon Plasma. We discuss here a complementary aspect of these collisions, the very peripheral ones. Due to coherence, there are strong electromagnetic fields of short duration in such collisions. They give rise to photon-photon and photon-nucleus collisions with high flux up to an invariant mass region hitherto unexplored experimentally. After a general survey photon-photon luminosities in relativistic heavy ion collisions are discussed. Special care is taken to include the effects of strong interactions and nuclear size. Then photon-photon physics at various gamma-gamma-invariant mass scales is discussed. The region of several GeV, relevant for RHIC is dominated by QCD phenomena (meson and vector meson pair production). Invariant masses of up to about 100 GeV can be reached at LHC, and the potential for new physics is discussed. Photonuclear reactions and other important background effects, especially diffractive processes are also discussed. Lepton-pair production, especially electron-positron pair production is copious. Due to the strong fields there will be new phenomena, especially multiple e+e- pair production.