Speaker
Guillermo Contreras
(FJFI CVUT Prague)
Description
The strong electromagnetic fields generated by ultra-relativistic heavy ions offer the possibility to study photoproduction processes at the LHC. In so called ultra-peripheral collisions (UPC), when the impact
parameter of the incoming hadrons is larger than the sum of their
radii, hadronic processes are strongly suppressed and only electromagenetic interactions remain.
ALICE has measured the coherent photo-nuclear production of $\rho^0$, J/$\psi$ and $\psi(2S)$ vector mesons in ultra-peripheral collisions of lead nuclei. These processes provide information on the gluon structure of the nuclear target at low Bjorken-$x$. The talk will cover the results from LHC Run1 data, as well as discuss the current status and prospects for analyses with LHC Run2 data.
Primary author
Guillermo Contreras
(FJFI CVUT Prague)
