Heavy ions at the Future Circular Collider

TL;DR

The paper discusses the potential of the Future Circular Collider to explore heavy-ion collisions at unprecedented energies, opening new avenues for studying quark-gluon plasma, gluon saturation, and photon-induced processes.

Contribution

It presents initial ideas and physics opportunities for heavy-ion operations at the FCC, including collision energies, luminosities, and scientific goals.

Findings

Potential collision energies of 39 and 63 TeV per nucleon-nucleon

Projected integrated luminosities above 30 nb^-1 per month

Exploration of quark-gluon plasma and gluon saturation phenomena

Abstract

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) Study is aimed at assessing the physics potential and the technical feasibility of a new collider with centre-of-mass energies, in the hadron-hadron collision mode, seven times larger than the nominal LHC energies. Operating such machine with heavy ions is an option that is being considered in the accelerator design studies. It would provide, for example, Pb-Pb and p-Pb collisions at sqrt{s_NN} = 39 and 63 TeV, respectively, per nucleon-nucleon collision, with integrated luminosities above 30 nb^-1 per month for Pb-Pb. This is a report by the working group on heavy-ion physics of the FCC Study. First ideas on the physics opportunities with heavy ions at the FCC are presented, covering the physics of the Quark-Gluon Plasma, of gluon saturation, of photon-induced collisions, as well as connections with other fields of high-energy physics.