Forward Experiments at LHC

Observations of Cosmic Rays over a wide energy range provide useful information to understand high energy phenomena in the Universe. Large experiments for the detection of secondary particles produced in the interaction of primary Cosmic Rays are providing valuable inputs and progress in the field. However, the uncertainty caused from the poor knowledge of the interaction between very high energy primary cosmic ray and the Earth’s atmosphere prevents the deduction of astrophysical parameters from the observational data. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) provides the best opportunity for calibrating the hadron interaction models in the most interesting energy range, between 1015 and 1017 eV. To constrain the models used in the extensive air shower simulations the measurements of very forward particles are mandatory. Among the LHC experiments, measurements expected by TOTEM, ZDCs and LHCf will give crucial forward particle data for cosmic ray studies. In this paper, the impact of LHC forward experiments for Cosmic Ray Physics is discussed.