New ALICE results shed light on the nature of gluonic matter at the Large Hadron Collider

In the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), proton and lead beams travel close to the speed of light. They carry a strong electromagnetic field that acts like a flux of photons as the beam moves through the accelerator. When the two beams at the LHC pass by close to each other without colliding, one of the beams may emit a photon of very high energy that strikes the other beam. This can result in photon—nucleus, photon—proton, and even photon—photon collisions.