Geometrical scaling for light flavor hadrons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how light flavor hadron observables in high-energy collisions scale with the saturation scale predicted by the Color Glass Condensate model, extending previous studies to strange and multi-strange hadrons in pp and A-A collisions.

Contribution

It extends the analysis of geometrical scaling to strange and multi-strange hadrons, comparing their behavior to non-strange hadrons in different collision systems.

Findings

Light flavor hadron observables scale with the saturation scale.

Strange hadrons show similar scaling behavior to non-strange hadrons.

Differences in behavior between strange and non-strange hadrons are discussed.

Abstract

As it is well known by now, the pre-partonic phase in hadron collisions is successfully described by the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) approach. Previous studies, based on experimental data obtained on a wide range of energies at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for $\pi^+$, $K^+$ and $p$, evidenced that observables related to the dynamics of the collision, i.e. the mean transverse momentum ($\langle p_T \rangle$), the slope of the $\langle p_T \rangle$ dependence on the mass of the hadrons and the average transverse flow velocity obtained from the simultaneous fits of the $p_T$ spectra of the particles with the Boltzmann-Gibbs Blast Wave (BGBW) expression, scale rather well as a function of the square root of the ratio of the particle density over unit of rapidity to the overlapping area of the colliding nuclei ($\sqrt{(dN/dy)/S_\perp}$), the relevant scale in the gluon saturation picture. Results of a similar study extended to strange and multi-strange hadrons, for both proton-proton (\textit{pp}) and heavy-ion (\textit{A-A}) collision systems are presented in the present paper. The similarities and differences in the behaviour of strange hadrons relative to non-strange hadrons are discussed.