Heavy Ion Results from CMS & ATLAS at the LHC

George Stephans

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The first heavy ion run at the LHC occurred in November of 2010 and was followed by a second run in late 2011 which increased the available event sample by more than an order of magnitude.  Heavy ion collisions at the LHC are expected to produce a partonic medium which has a higher energy density and a longer life-time than could be created at RHIC.  The CMS and ATLAS detector systems are well suited to measuring a wide array of observables in the high multiplicity environment of these collisions.  In particular, both detectors are optimized to identify and characterize the high transverse momentum particles which result predominantly from hard partonic scatterings.  Such scatterings are significantly enhanced at the higher beam energies provided by the LHC.  This talk will give an overview of what has been learned about the nature of the hot and dense medium created in high energy heavy ion collisions using data from these two experiments.