Shedding light on hadron structure with ultra-peripheral collisions

Lead nuclei, accelerated at the LHC, are sources of strong electromagnetic fields that can be used to measure photon-induced interactions in a new kinematic regime. These interactions are usually studied in ultra-peripheral p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions where hadronic interactions are strongly suppressed. Vector meson photoproduction is of particular interest since it is sensitive to gluon distributions in target hadrons. In this talk, an overview of ALICE, CMS and LHCb results on vector meson photoproduction in ultra-peripheral Pb-Pb and p-Pb collisions will be presented. Implications for the study of gluon saturation effects and nuclear gluon shadowing will be discussed. In addition projections for vector meson photoproduction measurements in LHC Run 3 and 4 will be presented.