Orateur
Cynthia Hadjidakis
(IPN)
Description
At very high energies or small values of Bjorken x, the increase of
parton density in hadronic matter is expected to lead to a saturated
partonic distribution regime. It has been suggested that such an
initial state effect, expected to be present before the Quark Gluon
Plasma phase, has been observed in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC
energies. The study of high partonic density effects in QCD can be
formulated in terms of an effective field theory, the Color Glass
Condensate (CGC). This theoretical framework is used in particular to describe
the new kinematic regime that is accessible at the LHC in p-A collisions.
In this talk the principal features of the high density regime will be
described, together with a brief look at the experimental observations
for saturation effects obtained at RHIC energies. Special attention
will be given to the prospects of observing saturation effects at the
LHC in p-A collisions with the ALICE experiment. In particular, heavy
flavour and quarkonia production will be discussed in terms of
physics performance studies of the ALICE Muon Forward Spectrometer.
Author
Cynthia Hadjidakis
(IPN)
