Charm production in high multiplicity pp events

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-linear increase of heavy quark production with charged particle multiplicity in high-energy proton-proton collisions, using the EPOS3 model to understand underlying reaction mechanisms.

Contribution

It demonstrates that multiple scattering and hydrodynamic expansion are key to explaining multiplicity dependence in heavy quark production, providing insights into proton-proton collision dynamics.

Findings

Heavy quark multiplicity increases non-linearly with charged particle multiplicity.

Multiple scattering and hydrodynamics significantly influence the reaction mechanism.

Model results are robust across various assumptions.

Abstract

Recent experimental studies of the multiplicity dependence of heavy quark (HQ) production in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV showed a strong non-linear increase of the HQ multiplicity as a function of the charged particle multiplicity. We try to understand this behavior using the EPOS3 approach. Two issues play an important role: multiple scattering, in particular its impact on multiplicity fluctuations, and the collective hydrodynamic expansion. The results are very robust with respect to many details of the modeling, which means that these data contain valuable information about very basic features of the reaction mechanism in proton-proton collisions.