Heavy Ions -- Prospects at the LHC

Berndt Müller

Published 2004-10-07, updated 2004-10-13Version 2

This is a review of the physics prospects for relativistic heavy ion collisions in the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The motivation for the study of superdense matter created in relativistic heavy ion collision is the prospect of observing a novel state of strongly interacting matter, the quark-gluon plasma. Experiments at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven have yielded important clues of the characteristic signatures of this new state. The LHC will extend the range of energy densities that can be explored and facilitate the observation of plentiful hard probes (jets, heavy quarks) of the properties of the dense matter.