K. Zielinski

Evidence for non-exponential elastic proton-proton differential cross-section at low |t| and √ s = 8 TeV by TOTEM

Abstract The TOTEM experiment has made a precise measurement of the elastic proton–proton differential cross-section at the centre-of-mass energy s = 8 TeV based on a high-statistics data sample obtained with the β ⁎ = 90 m optics. Both the statistical and systematic uncertainties remain below 1%, except for the t-independent contribution from the overall normalisation. This unprecedented precision allows to exclude a purely exponential differential cross-section in the range of four-momentum transfer squared 0.027 | t | 0.2 GeV 2 with a significance greater than 7 σ . Two extended parametrisations, with quadratic and cubic polynomials in the exponent, are shown to be well compatible with the data. Using them for the differential cross-section extrapolation to t = 0 , and further applying the optical theorem, yields total cross-section estimates of ( 101.5 ± 2.1 ) mb and ( 101.9 ± 2.1 ) mb , respectively, in agreement with previous TOTEM measurements.

LHC Optics Measurement with Proton Tracks Detected by the Roman Pots of the TOTEM Experiment

Precise knowledge of the beam optics at the LHC is crucial to fulfill the physics goals of the TOTEM experiment, where the kinematics of the scattered protons is reconstructed with near-beam telescopes—so-called Roman pots (RP). Before being detected, the protons’ trajectories are influenced by the magnetic fields of the accelerator lattice. Thus precise understanding of the proton transport is of key importance for the experiment. A novel method of optics evaluation is proposed which exploits kinematical distributions of elastically scattered protons observed in the RPs. Theoretical predictions, as well as Monte Carlo studies, show that the residual uncertainty of the optics estimation method is smaller than .

Diamond detectors for the TOTEM timing upgrade

This paper describes the design and the performance of the timing detector developed by the TOTEM Collaboration for the Roman Pots (RPs) to measure the Time-Of-Flight (TOF) of the protons produced in central diffractive interactions at the LHC. The measurement of the TOF of the protons allows the determination of the longitudinal position of the proton interaction vertex and its association with one of the vertices reconstructed by the CMS detectors. The TOF detector is based on single crystal Chemical Vapor Deposition (scCVD) diamond plates and is designed to measure the protons TOF with about 50 ps time precision. This upgrade to the TOTEM apparatus will be used in the LHC run 2 and will tag the central diffractive events up to an interaction pileup of about 1. A dedicated fast and low noise electronics for the signal amplification has been developed. The digitization of the diamond signal is performed by sampling the waveform. After introducing the physics studies that will most profit from the addition of these new detectors, we discuss in detail the optimization and the performance of the first TOF detector installed in the LHC in November 2015.