Prompt electron and tau neutrinos and antineutrinos in the forward region at the LHC

Abstract

Neutrino fluxes at high rapidity and at high energy are sensitive to QCD dynamics of heavy-flavor production in kinematic regions where measurements have not yet been made. The FASER$\hat{I}½$ and SND@LHC experiments scheduled for Run 3 at the LHC and the proposed Forward Physics Facility with a suite of experiments during the High-Luminosity LHC phase will probe neutrinos at high pseudorapidity. This short paper reports on recent evaluations of the prompt $\hat{I}{½}_{\ddot{I}}„+\bar{\hat{I}}{½}_{\ddot{I}}„$ and $\hat{I}{½}_e+\bar{\hat{I}}{½}_e$ double-differential cross sections in $pp$ collisions at the Large Hadron Collider from the production and decays of $D_s^{\pm }$ and $D^{\pm }$, respectively. For $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV, the double-differential neutrino energy and pseudorapidity distributions are evaluated at NLO QCD. Data tables with these predictions are presented. Future work needed to refine predictions of neutrino and antineutrino fluxes in the forward region at the LHC is discussed.

10 pages, 3 figures, contribution to Snowmass 2021, updated to include ancillary files