Probing small x parton densities in ultraperipheral AA and pA collisions at the CERN large hadron collider

We calculate photoproduction rates for several hard processes in ultraperipheral proton-lead and lead-lead collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with sNN=8.8 and 5.5 TeV, respectively, which could be triggered in the large LHC detectors. We use ATLAS as an example. The lead ion is treated as a source of (coherently produced) photons with energies and intensities greater than those of equivalent ep collisions at the DESY collider HERA. We find very large rates for both inclusive and diffractive production that will extend the HERA x range by nearly an order of magnitude for similar virtualities. We demonstrate that it is possible to reach the kinematic regime where nonlinear effects are larger than at HERA.