Measurement of very forward particle production at RHIC with 510 GeV proton-proton collisions

Sako, Takashi*; Tanida, Kiyoshi   ; 20 of others*

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider forward (RHICf) experiment has measured neutral particles produced in the very forward direction in the 510 GeV proton-proton collisions at RHIC in June 2017. The production cross sections of these particles are crucial to understand the hadronic interaction relevant to the air shower development at the cosmic-ray equivalent energy of eV, just below the energy of the knee. Together with the data at LHC, accelerator data can cover the interaction in the cosmic-ray energy of 10 eV to 10 eV. In addition, RHICf is able to improve the former measurements of single-spin asymmetry in the polarized proton-proton collisions that is sensitive to the fundamental process of the meson exchange. Common data taking with the STAR experiment will shed light on the unexplored low mass diffraction process.