Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach

Streszczenie

The CERN Large Hadron Collider is not only the collider with the highest energies for hadrons, but it also represents the photon energy frontier. The particles accelerated by the collider act as quasireal photon sources. These photons can interact with the incoming beam, giving rise to photo-induced reactions, usually referred to as Ultra-peripheral Collisions (UPCs). To conserve the quantum numbers of the photon in vacuum (J^PC=1^—), the photon may oscillate to a quark-antiquark pair, with two classes of processes: exclusive and inclusive UPC. Vector meson photoproduction is the main target of exclusive processes, and can be used to probe gluon saturation and nuclear shadowing. Inclusive processes can instead be used to look for signs of collectivity in the smallest of collisions systems.