Very Forward Calorimetry at the LHC - Recent results from ATLAS

Abstract

We present first results from the ATLAS Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDC) based on 7~TeV pp collision data recorded in 2010. The ZDC coverage of +/-~350 microradians about the forward direction makes possible the measurement of neutral particles (primarily pi0's and neutrons) over the kinematic region x_F >~0.1 and out to p_T<~ 1.2 GeV/c at large x_F. The ATLAS ZDC is unique in that it provides a complete image of both electromagnetic and hadronic showers.This is illustrated with the reconstruction of pi0's with energies of 0.7-3.5 TeV. We also discuss the waveform reconstruction algorithm which has allowed good time-of-flight resolution on leading neutrons emerging from the collisions despite the sparse (40 MHz) sampling of the calorimeter signals used.