heavy ion

To recreate conditions similar to those of the very early universe, powerful accelerators make head-on collisions between massive ions, such as gold or lead nuclei. Learn more about CERN's heavy ion collisions here.
41 results

LHC: A proton 'reference' run to prepare for lead

The Large Hadron Collider today collided protons at lower energies than usual to pave the way for studying lead-ion collisions

News
Accelerators
19 November, 2015
Accelerators
News
19 November, 2015

LHC completes proton run for 2015, preps for lead

After some 400 trillion proton-proton collisions delivered to both ATLAS and CMS, the accelerator will now switch to its heavy-ion programme

News
Accelerators
04 November, 2015
Accelerators
News
04 November, 2015

Breaking the Rules

This week it's the turn of heavy-ion physics to take the spotlight

Opinion
Physics
05 October, 2015
Physics
Opinion
05 October, 2015

Quenching jets in hot dense matter from lead-ion collisions

The ATLAS measurement compared data of 2.76 TeV lead-ion collisions taken in 2011 with proton-proton data from a dedicated run of the LHC in 2013

News
Physics
18 November, 2014

EPS honours CERN's heavy-ion researchers

Scientists with ALICE have been awarded the European Physical Society's Lise Meitner Prize for their work on quark-gluon plasma

News
Experiments
11 July, 2014
Experiments
News
11 July, 2014

CERN experiments present heavy-ion physics at Darmstadt

At Quark Matter 2014 this week in Germany, the ALICE, ATLAS and CMS experiments are presenting the latest results from the LHC's heavy-ion programme

News
Experiments
23 May, 2014

ALICE through a gamma-ray looking glass

The ALICE experiment is optimized to perform in the environment of heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, which can produce thousands of particles

News
Experiments
31 July, 2013
Experiments
News
31 July, 2013

Strangeness in Quark Matter 2013

The Strangeness in Quark Matter 2013 conference is taking place this week until 27 July in Birmingham, UK

News
Physics
23 July, 2013
Physics
News
23 July, 2013

Participants and spectators at the heavy-ion fireball

How ALICE finds out how much of a heavy ion takes part in a collision

News
Experiments
02 May, 2013

Heavy metal: Refilling the lead source for the LHC

Every two weeks, ion-source physicist Detlef Küchler refills the lead source for the LHC with pure lead 208

News
Accelerators
04 February, 2013
Accelerators
News
04 February, 2013

ALICE scrutinizes proton-lead run for quark-gluon plasma

The ALICE experiment will be watching the collisions closely to tease out the effects of lead ions from the effects of the plasma

News
Accelerators
22 January, 2013
Accelerators
News
22 January, 2013

Protons smash lead ions in first LHC collisions of 2013

Accelerator team declares "stable beams" as lead ions collide with protons in first LHC physics beams of 2013

News
Accelerators
21 January, 2013
Accelerators
News
21 January, 2013