Single and Double Photonuclear Excitations in Pb+Pb Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

Cross sections are calculated for single and double photon exchange in ultraperipheral Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC. The particle production is simulated with the DPMJET event generator. Large cross sections are found for particle production around mid-rapidity making these processes an important background to hadronic nuclear interactions at both the trigger and analysis levels.

Comments: 11 pages, 4 figures, added two references, typos corrected, to be published in Phys. Rev. C