Bose-Einstein condensation of pions in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider using non-extensive Tsallis statistics

TL;DR

This study investigates the potential formation of Bose-Einstein Condensation of pions in proton-proton collisions at the LHC using non-extensive Tsallis statistics, revealing how non-equilibrium affects critical temperature and condensate formation.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamically consistent non-extensive approach to estimate BEC conditions in high-energy collisions, linking non-extensivity to condensate properties.

Findings

Critical temperature depends on the non-extensive parameter q.

As q decreases, the critical temperature approaches the standard Bose-Einstein value.

Pion condensate particle numbers vary with final state multiplicity.

Abstract

The possibility of formation of Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) is studied in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt s$ = 7 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider. A thermodynamically consistent non-extensive formulation of the identified hadron transverse momentum distributions is used to estimate the critical temperature required to form BEC of charged pions, which are the most abundant species in a multi-particle production process in hadronic and nuclear collisions. The obtained results have been contrasted with the systems produced in Pb-Pb collisions to have a better understanding. We observe an explicit dependency of BEC critical temperature and number of particles in the pion condensates on the non-extensive parameter $q$, which is a measure of degree of non-equilibrium -- as $q$ decreases, the critical temperature increases and approaches to the critical temperature obtained from Bose-Einstein statistics without non-extensivity. Studies are performed on the final state multiplicity dependence of number of particles in the pion condensates in a wide range of multiplicity covering hadronic and heavy-ion collisions, using the inputs from experimental transverse momentum spectra.