ar X iv : 0 80 8 . 25 12 v 1 [ he p - ph ] 1 9 A ug 2 00 8 Study of highly - excited string states at the Large Hadron Collider

In TeV-scale gravity scenarios with large extra dimensions, black holes may be produced at future colliders. Good arguments have been made for why general relativistic black holes may be just out of reach of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). However, in weakly-coupled string theory, highly excited string states – string balls – could be produced at the LHC with high rates and decay thermally, not unlike general relativistic black holes. In this paper, we simulate and study string ball production and decay at the LHC. We specifically emphasize the experimentally-detectable similarities and differences between string balls and general relativistic black holes at a TeV scale.