Color reconnection and flow-like patterns in pp collisions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that PYTHIA 8 can produce flow-like phenomena in proton-proton collisions through color reconnection, which may explain flow signals observed at the LHC.

Contribution

It shows that color reconnection in PYTHIA 8 can generate flow-like effects, providing a possible explanation for flow signals in pp collisions.

Findings

Flow-like effects are produced by color reconnection in PYTHIA 8.

Identified hadron observables show flow-like patterns.

Flow signals are observed in both minimum bias and high-multiplicity events.

Abstract

Increasingly, with the data collected at the LHC we are confronted with the possible existence of flow in pp collisions. In this work we show that PYTHIA 8 produces flow-like effects in events with multiple hard subcollisions due to color string formations between final partons from independent hard scatterings, the so called color reconnection. We present studies of different identified hadron observables in pp collisions at 7 TeV with the tune 4C. Studies have been done both for minimum bias and multiplicity intervals in events with and without color reconnection to isolate the flow-like effect.