Heavy-ion physics with the ATLAS detector

The ATLAS detector is designed to study proton-proton collisions at the LHC. This paper reports on a preliminary evaluation of the ATLAS potential for heavy-ion physics. Performances of most of the detectors will not be significantly deteriorated by the high- multiplicity background from nucleus-nucleus collisions. In addition to global observables, jet quenching and heavy-quarkonia suppression, which are essential probes to study the formation of a quark-gluon plasma, should be accessible in ATLAS.