Measurement of antiproton production in $p$He collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\scriptscriptstyle\rm NN}}=110$ GeV

The antiproton production cross-section in collisions of a 6.5 TeV LHC proton beam on helium at rest is measured by the LHCb experiment using the SMOG internal gas target from a dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.4 $\text{nb}^{-1}$. This is the first direct measurement of antimatter production in $p$He collisions, and has important implications for the interpretation of recent results from the PAMELA and AMS-02 experiments, which measure the antiproton component in cosmic rays outside of the Earth's atmosphere.