### Particles, Astrophysics, and Nuclear Physics Seminar

Thursday, May 13, 2010
2:00pm – 3:30pm

Storrs Campus
Gant Science Complex P-121

Dr. Guilherme Milhano, from CENTRA, IST Lisbon and CERN, will present, “Initial Conditions for LHC Collisions.” Proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC will probe components of the colliding objects which carry a very small fraction of their longitudinal momentum (small Bjorken-x). While the standard evolution schemes based on collinear factorization are expected to fail in such a kinematical domain, non-linear QCD offers the possibility to safely determine the initial conditions for these collisions. I will present results from global fits yielding the necessary input for the calculation of physical observables. I will also highlight the importance of proton-nucleus collisions (yet to be approved) to test the fundamental assumptions underlying the standard extraction of nuclear initial conditions in the form of nuclear parton distribution functions.