Monte Carlo study of forward pi(0) production spectra to be measured by the LHCf experiment for the purpose of benchmarking hadron interaction models at 10(17) eV

Abstract The LHCf experiment aims to improve knowledge of forward neutral particle production spectra at the LHC energy which is relevant for the interpretation of air shower development of high energy cosmic rays. Two detectors, each composed of a pair of sampling and imaging calorimeters, have been installed at the forward region of IP1 to measure π0 energy spectra above 600 GeV. In this paper, we present a Monte Carlo study of the π0 measurements to be performed with one of the LHCf detectors for proton–proton collisions at s = 14  TeV. In approximately 40 min of operation at luminosity 0.8 × 10 29 cm - 2 s - 1 during the beam commissioning phase of LHC, about 1.5 × 104 π0 events are exp…