Charge-multiplicity and collision-energy dependence of $p_t$ spectra from $p$-$p$ collisions at the relativistic heavy-ion collider and large hadron collider

TL;DR

This paper extends a two-component model of hadron production from RHIC to LHC energies, analyzing how soft and hard spectrum components depend on charge multiplicity and collision energy across a wide energy range.

Contribution

It introduces a novel algebraic link between spectrum ratios and the full two-component model, revealing energy and multiplicity dependence of soft and hard spectrum components in p-p collisions.

Findings

The soft component's energy dependence suggests a relation to Gribov diffusion.

The hard component varies linearly with log(s/s0), consistent with jet spectrum measurements.

Spectrum ratios can be used to extract detailed component dependencies across energies.

Abstract

A two-component (soft + hard) model (TCM) of hadron production in yields and spectra derived from the charge-multiplicity dependence of 200 GeV p-p collisions at the relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) is extended to describe p-p spectrum data from the large hadron collider (LHC) up to 13 TeV. The LHC data include spectrum ratios that provide only partial information on the TCM. The LHC ratio method is applied to well-understood 200 GeV spectrum data to derive an algebraic link between spectrum ratios and the full TCM. Some aspects of the form of the hard component on transverse momentum are found to be $n_{ch}$ dependent. LHC spectrum ratios are then analyzed to obtain $n_{ch}$ and collision-energy (over three orders of magnitude) dependence of isolated soft and hard TCM spectrum components. The energy dependence of the spectrum soft component is a new result suggesting a relation to Gribov diffusion. The spectrum hard component varies simply and smoothly with $n_{ch}$ suggesting bias of the underlying jet spectrum and linearly with QCD parameter $\log(s/s_0)$, its properties consistent with minimum-bias reconstructed-jet spectrum measurements.