  Hadron collisions at the LHC offer a unique opportunity to study strong
interactions. The exciting data collected by the four RHIC experiments suggest
that in heavy-ion collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV, an equilibrated,
strongly-coupled partonic system is formed. An extrapolation of the existing
data toward LHC energies suggests that the heavy-ion program at the LHC is in a
situation comparable to that of the high-energy program, where new discoveries
near the TeV-scale are expected. Similarly, heavy-ion studies at the LHC are
bound to either confirm the theoretical picture emerging from RHIC or challenge
and extend our present understanding of strongly interacting matter at extreme
densities. The experience at RHIC shows that the ideal detector for future
heavy-ion studies should provide large acceptance for tracking and calorimetry,
high granularity, high resolution and use fast detector technologies as well as
sophisticated triggering. The CMS detector at the LHC excels in each of these
categories.
