ATLAS collaboration (2861 authors)Aguilar-Saavedra, Juan AntonioAmor Dos Santos, Susana PatriciaAnjos, NunoAraque, Juan PedroCarvalho, JoãoCastro, Nuno FilipeConde Muiño, PatriciaDa Cunha Sargedas De Sousa, Mario JoseFiolhais, MiguelGalhardo, BrunoGomes, AgostinhoGonçalo, RicardoJorge, PedroMachado Miguens, JoanaMaio, AméliaManeira, JoséOleiro Seabra, Luis FilipeOnofre, AntónioPedro, RuteSantos, HelenaSaraiva, JoãoSilva, JoséTavares Delgado, AdemarVeloso, FilipeWolters, Helmut2019-02-042019-02-042016-10-10http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2016.08.020http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/27147A measurement of the total pp cross section at the LHC at s=8 TeV is presented. An integrated luminosity of 500 μb−1 was accumulated in a special run with high- β⋆ beam optics to measure the differential elastic cross section as a function of the Mandelstam momentum transfer variable t . The measurement is performed with the ALFA sub-detector of ATLAS. Using a fit to the differential elastic cross section in the − t range from 0.014 GeV2 to 0.1 GeV2 to extrapolate t→0 , the total cross section, σtot(pp→X) , is measured via the optical theorem to be σtot(pp→X)=96.07±0.18(stat.)±0.85(exp.)±0.31(extr.)mb, where the first error is statistical, the second accounts for all experimental systematic uncertainties and the last is related to uncertainties in the extrapolation t→0 . In addition, the slope of the exponential function describing the elastic cross section at small t is determined to be B=19.74±0.05(stat.)±0.23(syst.)GeV−2 .engjournal article2019-02-04