Physics with ions at the Future Circular Collider

The unique physics opportunities accessible with nuclear collisions at the CERN Future Circular Collider (FCC) are summarized. Lead-lead (PbPb) and proton-lead (pPb) collisions at sNN=39 and 63 TeV respectively with Lint=33nb−1 and 8 pb −1 monthly integrated luminosities, will provide unprecedented experimental conditions to study quark-gluon matter at temperatures O(1 GeV). The following topics are succinctly discussed: (i) charm-quark densities thrice larger than at the LHC, leading to direct heavy-quark impact in the bulk QGP properties, (ii) quarkonia, including ϒ(1S) , melting at temperatures up to five times above the QCD critical temperature, (iii) access to initial-state nuclear parton distributions (nPDF) at fractional momenta as low as x≈10−7 , (iv) availability of about 5⋅105 top-quark pairs per run to study the high- x gluon nPDF and the energy loss properties of boosted colour-antennas, (v) study of possible Higgs boson suppression in the QGP, and (vi) high-luminosity γγ (ultraperipheral) collisions at c.m. energies up to 1 TeV.