Speaker
Dr
Tricomi Alessia
(University and INFN Catania)
Description
The LHCf detector is ready to take data at the LHC accelerator at CERN. The
whole detector has been installed at the beginning of 2008 on both side of LHC
collision point 1 (IP1) and the commissioning phase is in a well advanced stage.
Thanks to the excellent energy and position resolution of the two sampling
calorimeters, LHCf will be able to measure the pion production cross section at a
very small angle in p-p interactions up to 14 TeV in the center of mass system
through the measurement of the photons produced in the neutral
pion decay. It will also be able to identify neutrons and meausure their energy
spectrum. LHCf will thus provide a good calibration of the various shower models
that are widely used to estimate the primary energy of ultra-high-energy cosmic
rays. Many of the experimental procedures used to derive the energy spectra of the
incoming cosmic rays depend strongly on the nuclear interaction model used in the
Monte Carlo codes of the air showers and several open questions in cosmic ray
physics may profit from the accurate knowledge and calibration of Monte Carlo
models provided by the LHCf experiment.
Primary author
Dr
Tricomi Alessia
(University and INFN Catania)
