Speaker
Description
In July 2025, the LHC successfully carried out its first light-ion collision programme, delivering substantial luminosities for proton–oxygen, oxygen–oxygen, and neon–neon collisions across the LHC experiments. These new datasets offer unique opportunities to study the quark–gluon plasma in lighter nuclear systems and to explore the role of initial-state configurations in nuclear collisions.
In this talk, I will review early results obtained by different LHC experiments using the light-ion data, covering topics such as collectivity, nuclear modification of hard probes, and beam transmutation effects. I will also discuss how this pioneering run is shaping the future of the ion programme at the High-Luminosity LHC, including new possibilities enabled by accelerator upgrades. These developments open up new experimental avenues for ion physics at CERN, providing unique opportunities to deepen our understanding of the nature of the strong force across different temperature regimes.