Study of the inclusive production of charged pions, kaons, and protons in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 0.9, 2.76, and 7 TeV

TL;DR

This paper measures the spectra of charged pions, kaons, and protons in proton-proton collisions at different energies, analyzing their transverse momentum distributions and comparing results with theoretical models.

Contribution

It provides detailed measurements of identified charged hadron spectra at multiple energies and compares them to various PYTHIA event generator tunes, enhancing understanding of hadron production.

Findings

Average transverse momentum increases with hadron mass and event multiplicity.

Spectra are well described by certain PYTHIA tunes.

Yields and spectra vary with collision energy and multiplicity.

Abstract

Spectra of identified charged hadrons are measured in pp collisions at the LHC for sqrt(s) = 0.9, 2.76, and 7 TeV. Charged pions, kaons, and protons in the transverse-momentum range pt approximately 0.1-1.7 GeV and for rapidities abs(y) < 1 are identified via their energy loss in the CMS silicon tracker. The average pt increases rapidly with the mass of the hadron and the event charged-particle multiplicity, independently of the center-of-mass energy. The fully corrected pt spectra and integrated yields are compared to various tunes of the PYTHIA6 and PYTHIA8 event generators.