Measurement of Antiproton Production in p-He Collisions at sNN =110 GeV

Abstract

The cross section for prompt antiproton production in collisions of protons with an energy of 6.5 TeV incident on helium nuclei at rest is measured with the LHCb experiment from a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.5 nb-1. The target is provided by injecting helium gas into the LHC beam line at the LHCb interaction point. The reported results, covering antiproton momenta between 12 and 110 GeV/c, represent the first direct determination of the antiproton production cross section in p-He collisions, and impact the interpretation of recent results on antiproton cosmic rays from space-borne experiments.