CMS Physics Technical Design Report: Addendum on High Density QCD with Heavy Ions

Abstract

This report presents the capabilities of the CMS experiment to explore the rich heavy-ion physics programme offered by the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The collisions of lead nuclei at energies s N N = 5.5 TeV, will probe quark and gluon matter at unprecedented values of energy density. The prime goal of this research is to study the fundamental theory of the strong interaction -Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) -in extreme conditions of temperature, density and parton momentum fraction (low-x).