Abstract
Cosmic-rays sometimes produce showers of unusual composition that contain particles with energy-loss profiles different from all known particles. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will produce, for the first time, nuclear collisions at the extremely high energy characteristic of the cosmic-ray events. The CASTOR detector, a part of the huge CMS experiment, is designed for detailed studies of the products corresponding to the cores of cosmic-ray showers. It will cover angles of 0.1° to 0.7° from the beam. It will be divided azimuthally into 16 segments and longitudinally into 18 segments. It is assumed that cosmic ray showers are caused by nuclei, protons through iron, hitting the atmosphere. If CASTOR does not find events that can be identified with the anomalous cosmic-ray events, this assumption may need to be reconsidered. Pb - Pb collisions with the LHC will have an energy 28 times that of Au - Au collisions studied at RHIC. With this huge increase in energy a wealth of new phenomena is almost assured. Because of the much larger mass number, Pb - Pb events can be expected to show exotic phenomena that is beyond the reach of cosmic rays.
Highlights
The original motivation for CASTOR (Centauro And Strange Object Research) [1, 2] was to study, in the laboratory using heavy-ion beams from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), unexplained types of events seen in cosmic rays
The physics program for CASTOR as part of CMS goes well beyond the study of cosmic-ray related phenomena. It will be used for diffractive and low-x physics in pp and pA collisions. It will test the nonperturbative region of QCD at Bjorkenx as small as ∼ 10−6 − 10−7 and allow a detailed study of the Color Glass Condensate for which there is some evidence in RHIC data [3]
The exceptions are strange quark matter (SQM) based scenarios, which give the possibility of a simultaneous explanation of both the hadronrich composition and the unusual features of the strongly penetrating component
Summary
The original motivation for CASTOR (Centauro And Strange Object Research) [1, 2] was to study, in the laboratory using heavy-ion beams from the LHC, unexplained types of events seen in cosmic rays. The physics program for CASTOR as part of CMS goes well beyond the study of cosmic-ray related phenomena It will be used for diffractive and low-x physics in pp and pA collisions. A second pattern shows an anomalously strong penetrability of some objects in their passage through the atmosphere This phenomenon manifests itself by the characteristic energy deposition pattern of shower development in deep chambers (calorimeters), which shows a slow attenuation, a strong penetrating power and many maxima. These various features may be related and perhaps are different manifestations of the same phenomenon. The Centauro-related phenomena are described in the review [7]
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