Measurement of the inelastic proton-proton cross section at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

TLDR: In this paper, a measurement of the inelastic proton-proton cross section using 60''μb^{-1} of pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy sqrt[s] of 13'TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC is presented.

Abstract: This Letter presents a measurement of the inelastic proton-proton cross section using 60  μb^{-1} of pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy sqrt[s] of 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Inelastic interactions are selected using rings of plastic scintillators in the forward region (2.07 10^{-6}, where M_{X} is the larger invariant mass of the two hadronic systems separated by the largest rapidity gap in the event. In this ξ range the scintillators are highly efficient. For diffractive events this corresponds to cases where at least one proton dissociates to a system with M_{X}>13  GeV. The measured cross section is compared with a range of theoretical predictions. When extrapolated to the full phase space, a cross section of 78.1±2.9  mb is measured, consistent with the inelastic cross section increasing with center-of-mass energy.