Strange quark suppression and strange hadron production in pp collisions at RHIC and LHC

TL;DR

This study uses the PACIAE model to analyze strange hadron production in proton-proton collisions at RHIC and LHC energies, revealing energy-dependent patterns in strange particle ratios.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic investigation of strange particle production using the PACIAE model, incorporating strange quark suppression mechanisms to match experimental data.

Findings

Strange particle yields are well reproduced by the model.

The K/π ratio increases slightly with energy then saturates.

Strange quark suppression reduction is key to matching data.

Abstract

The parton and hadron cascade model PACIAE based on PYTHIA was utilized to systematically investigate the strange particle production in pp collisions at the RHIC and LHC energies. Taking the mechanism of reduction of the strange quark suppression into account the STAR and ALICE data of strange particle production in pp collisions are well reproduced. It turned out that the K/{\pi} ratio as a function of reaction energy in pp collisions shows slightly increasing from sqrt(s)=0.2 to 0.9 TeV and then turning to saturation.