Measurement of visible cross sections in proton-lead collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 5.02 TeV in van der Meer scans with the ALICE detector

TL;DR

This paper reports the measurement of visible cross sections in proton-lead collisions at 5.02 TeV using van der Meer scans with the ALICE detector, enabling precise luminosity determination and cross section estimation.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed measurement of visible cross sections in proton-lead collisions at 5.02 TeV with the ALICE detector, including separate measurements for different beam configurations.

Findings

Measured visible cross sections for two reference processes.

Calculated integrated luminosity for proton-lead and lead-proton data.

Estimated cross section for a third, configuration-independent process.

Abstract

In 2013, the Large Hadron Collider provided proton-lead and lead-proton collisions at the center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{\rm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV. Van der Meer scans were performed for both configurations of colliding beams, and the cross section was measured for two reference processes, based on particle detection by the T0 and V0 detectors, with pseudo-rapidity coverage $4.6<\eta< 4.9$, $-3.3<\eta<-3.0$ and $2.8<\eta< 5.1$, $-3.7<\eta<-1.7$, respectively. Given the asymmetric detector acceptance, the cross section was measured separately for the two configurations. The measured visible cross sections are used to calculate the integrated luminosity of the proton-lead and lead-proton data samples, and to indirectly measure the cross section for a third, configuration-independent, reference process, based on neutron detection by the Zero Degree Calorimeters.