The recent observation of neutrinos produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has ushered in an era of collider neutrino physics, bridging the TeV-scale gap between low-energy experiments and ultra-high energy neutrinos from astrophysical sources. The LHC neutrinos arise from the decays of hadrons, produced in the forward direction towards the beam pipe. This is a blind spot of the central experiment, and quantum chromodynamics (QCD) has remained poorly constrained in this kinematic regime. The new LHC far-forward neutrino program alleviates this by testing models of hadron production, which is essential also for modeling secondary showers in cosmic rays (CR), and prompt atmospheric neutrino backgrounds at neutrino telescopes. I will discuss how the forward neutrino program will resolve current discrepancies in LHC and CR data, and test QCD at extremely small proton momentum fractions. This will not only reduce QCD uncertainties in key measurements at the LHC and future colliders, but also enables searches for new physics effects that affect neutrino interaction rates or are subject to neutrino backgrounds.
Toni Makela, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California-Irvine
Host: Gustavo Alves
Joan West
(847) 491-3645
Email