Soft-QCD physics in pp and p-Pb with ALICE

TL;DR

This paper reviews ALICE's measurements of soft QCD phenomena in proton-proton and proton-lead collisions at the LHC, highlighting model comparisons and advancements in understanding non-perturbative particle production over 8 years.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental results on soft QCD at the LHC, emphasizing model-data comparisons and insights gained from extensive data collection.

Findings

Soft QCD processes dominate particle production at LHC energies.

Model comparisons reveal strengths and limitations of current phenomenological descriptions.

Extended data set improves understanding of non-perturbative QCD phenomena.

Abstract

At high collision energies as achieved at the LHC there are increasing contributions from hard processes, which can be computed with perturbative QCD. Nevertheless, particle production is still dominated by soft QCD with transferred momentum of a few GeV. These phenomena are described by non-perturbative phenomenology and challenge the theoretical models. ALICE has measured several observables which target soft QCD, both in Run 1 and 2 proton-proton and proton-lead collisions at the LHC. A selection of results will be presented in these proceedings, focusing on the model comparisons and summarising the understanding of soft QCD after almost 8 years of data taking.