Constraining models of hadronic showers using proton-Oxygen collisions at the LHC involving proton/neutron tagging

Abstract

The study of hadronic showers, which are produced by cosmic rays penetrating the Earth's atmosphere, is essential for shedding light on the origins and characteristics of high-energy particles originating from space and reaching our planet. At the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, there are plans to conduct a short run of proton--oxygen collisions in 2025 to refine the modeling of hadronic showers. This work explores the potential impact on constraining models of hadronic showers by measuring interactions facilitated by color-neutral objects such as photons, pomerons, and pions. These interactions are often characterized by high-energy protons or neutrons produced at forward rapidities and can be tagged using dedicated forward proton and neutron detectors.

4 pages, 5 figures, proceedings of the XVIII International Conference on Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics (TAUP 2023)

References in corpus (5)

• Determination of the Cosmic-Ray Chemical Composition: Open Issues and Prospects
• First measurement of the forward rapidity gap distribution in pPb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 8.16 TeV
• Recent results from the CMS Proton Precision Spectrometer
• Overview of ATLAS Forward Proton (AFP) detectors in Run-2 and outlook for Run-3 analyses
• Reducing model uncertainties using proton-oxygen collisions with proton/neutron tagging at the LHC