The study of heavy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) represents an opportunity to study partonic matter at center-of-mass energies a factor of \sim 27 times higher than currently possible. This dramatic increase in energy will allow the creation of strongly interacting matter at the highest energy density ever produced in the laboratory. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector is ideally suited to study the rich physics of Quantum Chromodynamics and the strong interaction in this new energy region. A brief overview of the heavy ion physics capabilities of the CMS detector is presented.

PACS numbers: 25.75.--q