Study of contributions of diffractive processes to forward neutral particle production with the ATLAS-LHCf detector

Abstract

LHCf is an experiment dedicated to verify the hadronic interaction models by measuring the forward neutral particle production at the LHC. Corresponding data are very important for understanding hadronic interactions occurring in air-shower development. According to the current LHCf results, no simulation model predicts the LHCf data perfectly. In order to provide more specific data, it is necessary to classify the LHCf observables into specific interaction types: diffraction or non-diffraction. Combining the information of ATLAS, LHCf is able to classify these specific interaction types experimentally. Especially, the ATLAS-LHCf joint experiment will have the unique sensitivity to low mass diffraction. LHCf and ATLAS have succeeded in the common data-taking in p-p collisions at √s = 13 TeV. We will report the first ATLAS-LHCf joint analysis result and discuss the impact of the corresponding joint analysis result to the determination of mass composition of ultra-high energy cosmic-rays.