Researchers explore the billiard dynamics of photon collisions

When one snooker ball hits another, both spring away from each other in an elastic manner. In the case of two photons, a similar process, the elastic collision, has never been observed. Physicists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences have shown, however, that such a process does not only occur, but could even soon be registered in heavy ion collisions at the LHC accelerator.