Understanding hadrons and cosmic rays with collider neutrinos with Toni Makela

The recent observation of neutrinos produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has ushered in an era of collider neutrino physics, filling the gap between the extreme energies of neutrino telescopes and the lower energies of reactors and accelerators. The LHC neutrinos arise from the weak decays of hadrons produced in proton-proton collisions, propagate in the forward direction towards the beam pipe, and interact in novel detectors placed along the collider tangent. Observing these neutrinos allows testing hadron production in a region where quantum chromodynamics is not yet fully understood, and probing rare electroweak processes such as neutrino tridents that may be boosted by new physics effects. Moreover, the results are important input for cosmic ray studies, helping e.g. to understand secondary showers, and will definitively test the enhanced strangeness hypothesis proposed to solve the cosmic ray muon puzzle.

This lecture was made possible by the William C. Ferguson Fund.