Speakers
Description
The production and prompt decays of $D_s$ and $B$ mesons to tau neutrinos and taus can produce a significant number of tau neutrinos in the high rapidity region at the LHC. Heavy flavor decays dominate tau neutrino production in the far-forward region. Using NLO QCD and heavy quark transverse momentum smearing guided by LHCb data on $D_s$ production for rapidity $y=2.0-4.5$, we present a new calculation of the spectrum of tau neutrinos, and for definiteness, the number of events for a 1.0 m radius, 1.0 m length lead detector, located 480 m from the LHC interaction point for $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV and ${\cal L}=3000$ fb$^{-1}$. We illustrate how tau neutrino detection in this region could probe a 3+1 active-sterile neutrino mixing scenario, in the context of the theoretical uncertainties for heavy flavor production.
Mini-abstract
A new NLO QCD calculation shows large numbers of forward tau neutrinos from heavy flavor at the LHC.