Antiproton production with a fixed target and search for superheavy particles at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experiment at the LHC to measure antiproton production in a forbidden region, aiming to estimate the cross section for creating superheavy particles with masses of tens of TeV.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental approach using existing detectors to explore subthreshold production of superheavy particles at the LHC.

Findings

Feasibility of separating forbidden from allowed production processes.

Potential to estimate cross sections for superheavy particle production.

Use of existing ALICE detectors at 7 TeV proton energy.

Abstract

A proposal for an experiment to measure the cross section of antiproton production in a proton-nuclear collision in a kinematically forbidden region for nucleon-nucleon interaction on a fixed LHC target is considered. It is shown that this process can be separated from the kinematically allowed production process using the existing detectors of the ALICE facility at a proton energy of 7 TeV with a fixed nuclear target. Assuming the scale dependence of the cross section, the data obtained can be used to estimate the subthreshold cross section for the production of superheavy particles with a mass of several tens of TeV in the LHC lead nucleus beam.