Status and Prospects of the LHCf and RHICf experiments
Résumé
Precise understanding of hadronic interactions at high energies is a key to improve mass composition measurements of very high energy cosmic-rays and to solve the muon excess issue observed in high energy cosmic-ray experiments using an air-shower technique. The LHCf and RHICf experiments measures the differential production cross sections of very forward neutral particle as photons, neutral pions and neutrons at LHC and RHIC, respectively. These data are critically important to test and tune hadronic interaction models used for air-shower simulations.
In this presentation, we introduce the recent results of both the experiments as well as our future operation plans. LHCf published an updated result of forward neutron measurement at pp, $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV. From the observed neutron energy spectra, we also obtained the average inelasticity, which is one of the key parameters for air shower development, as 0.536 +0.031-0.037. In addition, several analysis are on-going; neutral pion measurement at pp, $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV, central- forward correlation analysis with LHCf+ATLAS, photon measurement by RHICf.
LHCf plans to have operations at $pp$ and $p$O during the LHC-Run3 period. At pp collisions, new silicon readout system will be introduced to improve the read-out speed, and 10 times more statistics of the previous operation in 2015 will be obtained. Thanks to high statistics, rare particles such as $\eta$, $K^0_s$ and $\Lambda$ will be addressed also. We also plan another operation at RHIC in 2024 with a new detector. The detector, a calorimeter composed of tungsten, Si pad and pixel layers, will have a much wider acceptance and higher sensitivity of $K^0_s$ measurement than the current detector.
Mots clés
p p: scattering
n: hadroproduction
pi0: hadroproduction
forward production
LHC-F
statistics
photon
Brookhaven RHIC Coll
pixel
K0(S)
mass spectrum
sensitivity
acceptance
readout
silicon
ATLAS
CERN LHC Coll
correlation
calorimeter
tungsten
air
neutral particle
differential cross section: measured
numerical calculations: Monte Carlo
data analysis method
experimental results
13000 GeV-cms
showers: atmosphere
energy: high
n: energy spectrum
cosmic radiation: energy
interaction: model
cosmic radiation: VHE
muon: cosmic radiation