Physics of Ultra-Peripheral Nuclear Collisions

Moving highly-charged ions carry strong electromagnetic fields which act as a field of photons. In collisions at large impact parameters, hadronic interactions are not possible, and the ions interact through photon-ion and photon-photon collisions known as ultra-peripheral collisions (UPC). Hadron colliders like the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produce photonuclear and two-photon interactions at luminosities and energies beyond that accessible elsewhere; the LHC will reach a γp energy ten times that of the Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA). Reactions as diverse as the production of anti-hydrogen, photoproduction of the ρ0, transmutation of lead into bismuth and excitation of collective nuclear resonances have already been studied. At the LHC, UPCs can study many types of ''new physics''