NEUTRINO FLUXES AT FUTURE HADRON COLLIDERS

We study the neutrino fluxes produced by the decay of low momentum transfer charmed and beautiful particles in beam-beam and fixed-target collisions at LHC and SSC energies. To study the total production cross sections and longitudinal momentum distribution of those particles, we use a non-perturbative QCD approach, the Quark Gluon String Model. The transverse momentum distributions are computed by extrapolation of existing data with an empirical formula based on Hagedorn's thermodynamical model. We discuss various set-ups to detect and exploit these neutrinos at the LHC. We find that in a relatively small target located directly downstream of the interaction point, at about 100 metres distance, a few thousand nu(tau) interactions per year, at the current design luminosity of the LHC, could be observed. The number of nu(e) and nu(mu) interactions will be a factor of 10 higher. This demonstrates the possibility of a high energy neutrino physics program at the LHC (and possibly also at the SSC) that would include a direct observation of the as yet unseen tau neutrino.