The LHCf experiment at the LHC accelerator

The claimed discovery of atmospheric shower induced by cosmic-ray with energy beyond the GZK cutoff by the AGASA experiment in 1994-1995, although not confirmed by other important experiments like Fly's Eye and Hi-Res, together with the poor knowledge of the composition of cosmic rays around and beyond the Knee region, have highlighted the necessity of new experiments that should increase our present knowledge of HECR and UHECR. For this reason big efforts have been addressed to the development of new experiments, like Auger, TA and EUSO, for a systematic study of the UHE atmospheric showers with increased capabilities with respect to the previous experiments. Moreover complementary experiments should allow a precise calibration of the methods used for the reconstruction of cosmic-ray showers in atmosphere. Their aim is the measurement of quantities that are used in these procedures and that are not yet precisely known. Under this perspective the LHCf experiment is a compact experiment which has been proposed for the study of neutral pion and gamma production at high energy in proton-proton interaction in the very forward region of the LHC accelerator. It will help calibrating the algorithms that are used to reconstruct the atmospheric shower events for energy beyond the Knee. The LHCf apparatus and the results of the first beam test, held in 2004, are shortly discussed in this work.