CERN Accelerating science

Lead nuclei, accelerated at the LHC, are sources of strong electromagnetic fields that can be used to measure photon-induced interactions in a new kinematic regime. These interactions are studied in ultra-peripheral p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions by selecting events with large rapidity gaps and only few tracks in the detector. Vector meson photo-production is of particular interest since it is sensitive to gluon distributions in target hadrons. In this talk, recent ALICE results on vector meson photo-production in ultra-peripheral Pb-Pb and p-Pb collisions will be presented. Implications for the study of gluon saturation effects and nuclear gluon shadowing will be discussed. In addition projections for vector meson photo-production measurements in LHC Run 3 and 4 will be presented.