EM-induced processes in heavy ion collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Electromagnetic processes provide new tools for studying the partonic structure of nuclei, and possibly for directly probing the quark gluon plasma. Ultra-peripheral heavy ion collisions occur when the nuclei have large impact parameter and interact through photon-induced reactions. These include processes in which an energetic photon emitted by one nucleus resolves the partonic structure of the other and stimulates jet production. Much like deep inelastic scattering, such processes provide a clean probe of the nuclear parton distributions. Jet photo-production represents the most direct opportunity to study nuclear parton distributions until a future electron-ion collider is constructed. This talk presents measurements of ultra-peripheral jet photo-production in Pb+Pb collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. It also presents another application of EM-induced processes, where dimuons produced by gamma-gamma processes are observed to show a centrality-dependent broadening in their opening angle, which can be interpreted as a momentum imparted by traversing the hot, dense medium.