They went looking for collisions between photons and nuclei, called photonuclear collisions, in data collected during the lead-ion runs at the LHC. These runs have happened in the few weeks just before the LHC’s winter shutdown each year that the LHC has been in operation.
Lead nuclei are made up of protons and neutrons, which are made up of even smaller fundamental particles called quarks. “You can think of the nucleus like a bag of quarks,” Noronha-Hostler says.
This bag of quarks is held together by gluons, which “glue” small groups of quarks into composite particles called hadrons.
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Similar ideas to The Large Light Collider
During the lead-ion runs at the LHC, nuclei aren’t the only things colliding. Because they have a positive charge, lead nuclei carry strong electromagnetic fields that grow in intensity as they accelerate. Their electromagnetic fields spit out high-energy photons, which can also collide—a fairly ...
When two lead nuclei collide at high energy inside the LHC, the gluons can lose their grip, causing the protons and neutrons to melt and merge into a quark-gluon plasma. The now-free quarks and gluons pull on each other, holding together as the plasma expands and cools.
Ev...
For now, the exact mechanism that may be causing this quark-gluon plasma signature within photonuclear collisions remains a mystery. Whatever is going on, Noronha-Hostler says figuring out these collisions could be an important step in quark-gluon plasma research.
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