Abstract
Studies of high energy proton interactions have been basic inputs to understand the cosmic-ray spectra observed on the earth. Yet, the experimental knowledge with controlled beams has been limited. In fact, uncertainties of the forward hadron production are very large due to the lack of experimental data. The FASER experiment is proposed to measure particles, such as neutrinos and hypothetical dark-sector particles, at the forward location of the 14 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC. As it corresponds to 100-PeV proton interactions in fixed target mode, a precise measurement by FASER would provide information relevant for PeV-scale cosmic rays. By studying three flavor neutrinos with the dedicated neutrino detector (FASERν), FASER will lead to a quantitative understanding of prompt neutrinos, which is an important background towards the astrophysical neutrino observation by neutrino telescopes such as IceCube. In particular, the electron and tau neutrinos have strong links with charmed hadron production. And, the FASER measurements may also shed light on the unresolved muon puzzle at the high energy. FASER is going to start taking data in 2022. We expect about 8000 numu, 1300 nue and 20 nutau CC interactions at the TeV energy scale during Run 3 of the LHC operation (2022-2024) with a 1.1 tons emulsion-based neutrino detector. We report here the overview and prospect of the FASER experiment in relation to the cosmic-ray physics, together with the first LHC neutrino candidates that we caught in the pilot run held in 2018.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1025 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Proceedings of Science |
| Volume | 395 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 18 Mar 2022 |
| Event | 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2021 - Virtual, Berlin, Germany Duration: 12 Jul 2021 → 23 Jul 2021 |
Funding
We thank CERN for the excellent performance of the LHC and the technical and administrative staff members at all FASER institutions. We also gratefully acknowledge invaluable assistance from many groups at CERN, particularly the Physics Beyond Colliders study group; the ATLAS Collaboration for providing the luminosity value; the NA65/DsTau Collaboration for providing their spare emulsion films and tungsten plates for this measurement, and Masahiro Komatsu for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by Heising-Simons Foundation Grant Nos. 2018-1135, 2019-1179, and 2020-1840, Simons Foundation Grant No. 623683, and the Department of Energy Grant No. DE-SC0016013. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Nos. JP19H01909, JP20H01919, JP20K04004, JP20K23373, a research grant from the Mitsubishi Foundation, and the joint research program of the Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General