First Heavy Ion collisions at LHC - Hard probes (jets, photons, onia)

We will present the capabilities of the ATLAS, ALICE and CMS experiments to explore the heavy-ion physics programme in hard probes sector offered by the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The collisions of lead nuclei at energies sqrt(sNN) = 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 (QCD) in extreme conditions of temperature, density and low parton momentum fraction. The current paper will give an overview of the potential of ATLAS, ALICE and CMS to carry out a set of representative hard probes measurements with Pb--Pb beams. These include perturbative processes, such as quarkonia, heavy-quarks, jets, photon-jet, and high pT hadrons --- which yield ``tomographic'' information of the hottest and densest phases of the reaction.