The cross-section for inelastic proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13\,TeV is measured with the LHCb detector. The fiducial cross-section for inelastic interactions producing at least one prompt long-lived charged particle with momentum $p>2$\,GeV/$c$ in the pseudorapidity range $2<\eta<5$ is determined to be $\sigma_{\rm acc}= 62.2 \pm 0.2 \pm 2.5$\,mb. The first uncertainty is the intrinsic systematic uncertainty of the measurement, the second is due to the uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The statistical uncertainty is negligible. Extrapolation to full phase space yields the total inelastic proton-proton cross-section $\sigma_{\rm inel}= 75.4 \pm 3.0 \pm 4.5$\,mb, where the first uncertainty is experimental and the second due to the extrapolation. An updated value of the inelastic cross-section at a centre-of-mass energy of 7\,TeV is also reported.
Forward top quark pair production is studied in $pp$ collisions in the $\mu eb$ final state using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.93 fb$^{-1}$ collected with the LHCb experiment at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The cross-section is measured in a fiducial region where both leptons have a transverse momentum greater than 20 GeV and a pseudorapidity between 2.0 and 4.5. The quadrature sum of the azimuthal separation and the difference in pseudorapidities, denoted $\Delta R$, between the two leptons must be larger than 0.1. The $b$-jet axis is required to be separated from both leptons by a $\Delta R$ of 0.5, and to have a transverse momentum in excess of 20 GeV and a pseudorapidity between 2.2 and 4.2. The cross-section is measured to be $$\sigma_{t\bar{t}}= 126\pm19\,(\mathrm{stat})\pm16\,(\mathrm{syst})\pm5\,(\mathrm{lumi})\,\,\mathrm{ fb}$$ where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, and the third is due to the luminosity determination. The measurement is compatible with the Standard Model prediction.
The yield of charged particles associated with high-$p_{\rm T}$ trigger particles ($8 < p_{\rm T} < 15$ GeV/$c$) is measured with the ALICE detector in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV relative to proton-proton collisions at the same energy. The conditional per-trigger yields are extracted from the narrow jet-like correlation peaks in azimuthal di-hadron correlations. In the 5% most central collisions, we observe that the yield of associated charged particles with transverse momenta $p_{\rm T}> 3$ GeV/$c$ on the away-side drops to about 60% of that observed in pp collisions, while on the near-side a moderate enhancement of 20-30% is found.
The $p_{\rm T}$-differential inclusive production cross sections of the prompt charmed mesons $D^0$, $D^+$, and $D^{*+}$ in the rapidity range |y|<0.5 were measured in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV at the LHC using the ALICE detector. Reconstructing the decays $D^0\rightarrow K^-\pi^+$, $D^+\rightarrow K^-\pi^+\pi^+$, $D^{*+}\rightarrow D^0\pi^+$, and their charge conjugates, about 8,400 $D^0$, 2,900 $D^+$, and 2,600 $D^{*+}$ mesons with 1<$p_{\rm T}$<24 GeV/$c$ were counted, after selection cuts, in a data sample of 3.14x10$^8$ events collected with a minimum-bias trigger (integrated luminosity $L_{\rm int}$ = 5/nb). The results are described within uncertainties by predictions based on perturbative QCD.
The first measurements of the invariant differential cross sections of inclusive $\pi^0$ and $\eta$ meson production at mid-rapidity in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=0.9$ TeV and $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV are reported. The $\pi^0$ measurement covers the ranges $0.4<p_T<7$ GeV/$c$ and $0.3<p_T<25$ GeV/$c$ for these two energies, respectively. The production of $\eta$ mesons was measured at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV in the range $0.4<p_T<15$ GeV/$c$. Next-to-Leading Order perturbative QCD calculations, which are consistent with the $\pi^0$ spectrum at $\sqrt{s}=0.9$ TeV, overestimate those of $\pi^0$ and $\eta$ mesons at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV, but agree with the measured $\eta/\pi^0$ ratio at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV.
The TOTEM experiment has measured the charged particle pseudorapidity density dN_{ch}/deta in pp collisions at sqrt{s} = 7 TeV for 5.3<|eta|<6.4 in events with at least one charged particle with transverse momentum above 40 MeV/c in this pseudorapidity range. This extends the analogous measurement performed by the other LHC experiments to the previously unexplored forward eta region. The measurement refers to more than 99% of non-diffractive processes and to single and double diffractive processes with diffractive masses above ~3.4 GeV/c^2, corresponding to about 95% of the total inelastic cross-section. The dN_{ch}/deta has been found to decrease with |eta|, from 3.84 pm 0.01(stat) pm 0.37(syst) at |eta| = 5.375 to 2.38 pm 0.01(stat) pm 0.21(syst) at |eta| = 6.375. Several MC generators have been compared to data; none of them has been found to fully describe the measurement.
Measurements of cross sections of inelastic and diffractive processes in proton--proton collisions at LHC energies were carried out with the ALICE detector. The fractions of diffractive processes in inelastic collisions were determined from a study of gaps in charged particle pseudorapidity distributions: for single diffraction (diffractive mass $M_X < 200$ GeV/$c^2$) $\sigma_{\rm SD}/\sigma_{\rm INEL} = 0.21 \pm 0.03, 0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.08}$, and $0.20^{+0.04}_{-0.07}$, respectively at centre-of-mass energies $\sqrt{s} = 0.9, 2.76$, and 7~TeV; for double diffraction (for a pseudorapidity gap $\Delta\eta > 3$) $\sigma_{\rm DD}/\sigma_{\rm INEL} = 0.11 \pm 0.03, 0.12 \pm 0.05$, and $0.12^{+0.05}_{-0.04}$, respectively at $\sqrt{s} = 0.9, 2.76$, and 7~TeV. To measure the inelastic cross section, beam properties were determined with van der Meer scans, and, using a simulation of diffraction adjusted to data, the following values were obtained: $\sigma_{\rm INEL} = 62.8^{+2.4}_{-4.0} (model) \pm 1.2 (lumi)$ mb at $\sqrt{s} =$ 2.76~TeV and $73.2^{+2.0}_{-4.6} (model) \pm 2.6 (lumi)$ mb at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7~TeV. The single- and double-diffractive cross sections were calculated combining relative rates of diffraction with inelastic cross sections. The results are compared to previous measurements at proton--antiproton and proton--proton colliders at lower energies, to measurements by other experiments at the LHC, and to theoretical models.
At the LHC energy of $\sqrt s = 7\,{\mathrm { TeV}}$ , under various beam and background conditions, luminosities, and Roman Pot positions, TOTEM has measured the differential cross-section for proton-proton elastic scattering as a function of the four-momentum transfer squared t. The results of the different analyses are in excellent agreement demonstrating no sizeable dependence on the beam conditions. Due to the very close approach of the Roman Pot detectors to the beam center (≈5σ(beam)) in a dedicated run with β* = 90 m, |t|-values down to 5·10(−)(3) GeV(2) were reached. The exponential slope of the differential elastic cross-section in this newly explored |t|-region remained unchanged and thus an exponential fit with only one constant B = (19.9 ± 0.3) GeV(−)(2) over the large |t|-range from 0.005 to 0.2 GeV(2) describes the differential distribution well. The high precision of the measurement and the large fit range lead to an error on the slope parameter B which is remarkably small compared to previous experiments. It allows a precise extrapolation over the non-visible cross-section (only 9%) to t = 0. With the luminosity from CMS, the elastic cross-section was determined to be (25.4 ± 1.1) mb, and using in addition the optical theorem, the total pp cross-section was derived to be (98.6 ± 2.2) mb. For model comparisons the t-distributions are tabulated including the large |t|-range of the previous measurement (TOTEM Collaboration (Antchev G. et al), EPL, 95 (2011) 41001).
The the pseudorapidity density of charged particles dN$_{ch}$/d$\eta$ is measured by the TOTEM experiment in pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV within the range 3.9 < $\eta$ < 4.7 and −6.95 < $\eta$ < −6.9. Data were collected in a low intensity LHC run with collisions occurring at a distance of 11.25 m from the nominal interaction point. The data sample is expected to include 96-97% of the inelastic proton-proton interactions. The measurement reported here considers charged particles with $P_T$ > 0 MeV/c, produced in inelastic interactions with at least one charged particle in −7 < $\eta$ < −6 or 3.7< $\eta$ < 4.8. The dN$_{ch}$/d$\eta$ has been found to decrease with |$\eta$|, from 5.11 ± 0.73 at $\eta$ =3.95 to 1.81 ± 0.56 at $\eta$ = −6.925. Several MC generators are compared to the data and are found to be within the systematic uncertainty of the measurement.
The differential cross sections for inclusive neutral pions as a function of transverse and longitudinal momentum in the very forward rapidity region have been measured at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with the Large Hadron Collider forward detector (LHCf) in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 2.76 and 7 TeV and in proton-lead collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies of $\sqrt{s_\text{NN}}=$ 5.02 TeV. Such differential cross sections in proton-proton collisions are compatible with the hypotheses of limiting fragmentation and Feynman scaling. Comparing proton-proton with proton-lead collisions, we find a sizable suppression of the production of neutral pions in the differential cross sections after subtraction of ultra-peripheral proton-lead collisions. This suppression corresponds to the nuclear modification factor value of about 0.1-0.3. The experimental measurements presented in this paper provide a benchmark for the hadronic interaction Monte Carlo simulation codes that are used for the simulation of cosmic ray air showers.