| Abstract: | Heavy ions at high velocities provide very strong
electromagnetic fields for a very short time.
The main characteristics of ultraperipheral
relativistic heavy ion collisions are reviewed,
characteristic parameters are identified.
The main interest in ultraperipheral heavy ion
collisions at relativistic ion colliders like the LHC
is the interactions of very high energy (equivalent) photons with
the countermoving (equivalent) photons and hadrons (protons/ions).
The physics of these interactions is quite different from
and complementary to the physics of the strong fields achieved with
current and future lasers. |
