Choose timezone
Your profile timezone:
Powered by Indico
v3.3.4-pre
LHC collisions can act as a source of photons in the initial state. Indeed, photon-intitiated production is a promising search channel for BSM states as well as probe of the EW couplings of the SM particles. Due to the colour singlet nature of the photon, a key feature of this process in proton-proton collisions is the possibility for leaving the protons intact and/or producing rapidity gaps in the final state. Moreover, the possibilities are not limited to proton collisions: in heavy ion collisions, the ions can act as a strong source of photon radiation, and the photon-initiated channel can play a significant role. In this talk I will overview the current status and prospects for photon-initiated production at the LHC. I will discuss the theoretical foundations underlying the modelling of such processes and their implementation in the SuperChic Monte-Carlo event generator. I will in particular demonstrate that the underlying theory is well understood, with limited (but not zero) sensitivity to the unconstrained region of QCD. We are therefore justified in viewing such processes as being due to photon-photon collisions, even if the devil is as always in the detail.