Saturation of Hadron Production in Proton-(anti)Proton Collisions at Low Pt

TL;DR

This paper analyzes high-energy proton-(anti)proton collision data using z-scaling, revealing saturation of the scaling function at low transverse momenta, confirmed by recent LHC measurements, and discusses a microscopic production scenario.

Contribution

It demonstrates the saturation of the z-scaling function at low z values in high-energy collisions and extends the saturation region with new LHC data, proposing a microscopic production model.

Findings

Saturation of the scaling function PSI(z) at z<0.1

Confirmation of saturation down to z=0.05 by CMS data

Extension of saturation region to z=0.002 at 7 TeV

Abstract

Experimental data on inclusive cross sections of the hadrons produced in high energy proton-(anti)proton collisions are analyzed in the z-scaling approach. Saturation of the scaling function PSI(z) for z<0.1 (low transverse momenta) was found. The first results on charged hadron spectra in pp collisions obtained by the CMS Collaboration at the LHC have confirmed the saturation down to the value of z=0.05. The CMS data on neutral K-meson production at s^{1/2}=7 TeV extend the saturation region even to a lower value of z=0.002 in the new energy domain. A microscopic scenario of hadron production at a constituent level based on the z-scaling is discussed in the saturation regime.