Feasibility studies for quarkonium production at a fixed-target experiment using the LHC proton and lead beams (AFTER@LHC)

Abstract

Used in the fixed-target mode, the multi-TeV LHC proton and lead beams allow for studies of heavy-flavour hadroproduction with unprecedented precision at backward rapidities - far negative Feyman-x - using conventional detection techniques. At the nominal LHC energies, quarkonia can be studies in detail in p+p, p+d and p+A collisions at sqrt(s_NN) ~ 115 GeV as well as in Pb+p and Pb+A collisions at sqrt(s_NN) ~ 72 GeV with luminosities roughly equivalent to that of the collider mode, i.e. up to 20 fb-1 yr-1 in p+p and p+d collisions, up to 0.6 fb-1 yr-1 in p+A collisions and up to 10 nb-1 yr-1 in Pb+A collisions. In this paper, we assess the feasibility of such studies by performing fast simulations using the performance of a LHCb-like detector.