Speaker
Description
Ultra-peripheral collisions provide a unique environment to study pomeron- and photon-induced reactions with heavy nuclei. These interactions can produce a wide range of final state particles, from light vector mesons to heavy quarkonia, and probe potentially exotic phenomena. With a fast and flexible DAQ, full particle ID, and the ability to reconstruct very low pt particles, LHCb is uniquely well suited to study final states with leptons, hadrons or photons. Also, using the HeRSCheL detector, the far forward event activity can be detected and used to tag events with nuclear break-up. In this contribution, we will present recent LHCb results from ultra-peripheral heavy ion collisions and discuss how these impact our understanding new exotic phenomena, the partonic structure of nuclei and hadronization in small systems.
