Speaker
Description
Fixed-target pp and pA collisions with a proton beam at the TeV scale provide unique laboratories for studying of the nucleon’s internal dynamics and, more in general, for investigating the complex phenomena that arise in the non-perturbative regime of QCD. Due to the significant boost of the reaction products in the laboratory frame, fixed-target collisions allow to access the poorly explored backward center-of-mass rapidity region, corresponding to the high x-Bjorken and high negative x-Feynman regimes. Thanks to its forward acceptance and outstanding performance, the LHCb detector at the LHC is perfectly suited for reconstructing particles produced in fixed-target collisions, simultaneous with the beam-beam interactions, at energies varying from √s_NN=72 GeV to √s=115 GeV. The recently installed unpolarised fixed-target system (SMOG2) paves the way to this new technology at LHC, facilitating quantitative searches also using rare probes like c- or b-quarks. In addition, SMOG2 will serve as R&D for the proposed polarised gas target project, LHCspin. This presentation provides an overview of the unpolarised results and outlines the future polarised project.
