Physics with ions at the Future Circular Collider

Abstract

The unique physics opportunities accessible with nuclear collisions at the CERN Future Circular Collider (FCC) are summarized. Lead-lead (PbPb) and proton-lead (pPb) collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 39 and 63 TeV respectively with ${\mathcal{L}}_{int}$ = 33 nb${}^{-1}$ and 8 pb${}^{-1}$ monthly integrated luminosities, will provide unprecedented experimental conditions to study quark-gluon matter at temperatures $\mathcal{O}$(1 GeV). The following topics are succinctly discussed: (i) charm-quark densities thrice larger than at the LHC, leading to direct heavy-quark impact in the bulk QGP properties, (ii) quarkonia, including $\hat{I}\yen (1S)$, melting at temperatures up to five times above the QCD critical temperature, (iii) access to initial-state nuclear parton distributions (nPDF) at fractional momenta as low as $x\approx 10^{-7}$, (iv) availability of $5\cdot 10^5$ top-quark pairs per run to study the high-$x$ gluon nPDF and the energy loss properties of boosted colour-antennas, (v) study of possible Higgs boson suppression in the QGP, and (vi) high-luminosity ${\hat{I}}^3{\hat{I}}^3$ (ultraperipheral) collisions at c.m. energies up to 1 TeV.

4 pages, 6 figures. Proceedings Quark Matter'17 (Chicago, Feb. 2017). Nucl.Phys.A, to appear