Status and prospects for hadron production experiments

Hadron production measurements for neutrino experiments is a well established field at CERN since the ’70s. Precise prediction of atmospheric neutrino fluxes, characterization of accelerator neutrino beams, quantification of pion production and capture for neutrino factory designs, all of these would profit from hadron production measurements. In recent years, interest in such studies was revived and new generation of low-energy (from 3 to 400 GeV) hadron production experiments were built or proposed. Such experiments all share a basic design, consisting in the presence of open-geometry spectrometers, as close as possible to full angular coverage, and aiming at full particle identification. Many new results are now provided by Harp in the very low energy range (3 to 15 GeV/c). NA61 at CERN and MIPP at Fermilab are taking data and in the next years will explore the medium energy range (up to 400 GeV/c). Finally at LHC energies for the first time thanks to the TOTEM experiment, it will be possible to measure with unprecedented precision the total cross section beyond 1 TeV/c.