The LHC forward experiment (LHCf) is specifically designed for measurements
of the very forward (η>8.4) production cross sections of neutral pions
and neutrons at Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. LHCf started data taking
in December 2009, when the LHC started to provide stable collisions of protons
at s​=900\,GeV. Since March 2010, LHC increased the collision energy up
to s​=7\,TeV. By the time of the symposium, LHCf collected 113k events
of high energy showers (corresponding to ∼7M inelastic collisions) at
s​=900\,GeV and ∼100M showers (∼14 nb−1 of integrated
luminosity) at s​=7\,TeV. Analysis results with the first limited
sample of data demonstrate that LHCf will provide crucial data to improve the
interaction models to understand very high-energy cosmic-ray air showers.Comment: Invited talk given at XVI International Symposium on Very High Energy
Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI 2010), Batavia, IL, USA, 28 June 2 July
2010. 6 pages, 10 figure