A new review of excitation functions of hadron production in $pp$ collisions in the NICA energy range

Abstract

Data on hadron multiplicities from inelastic proton-proton interactions in the energy range of the NICA collider have been compiled. The compilation includes recent results from the NA61/SHINE and NA49 experiments at the CERN SPS accelerator. New parameterizations for excitation functions of mean multiplicities $\left<\pi^{\pm}\right>$, $\left<K^{\pm}\right>$, $\left<K^{0}_S\right>$, $\left<\Lambda\right>$, $\left<p\right>$, $\left<\bar{p}\right>$ are obtained in the region of collision energies $3<\sqrt{s_{NN}}<31$ GeV. The energy dependence of the particle yields, as well as variation of rapidity and transverse momentum distributions are discussed. A standalone algorithm for hadron phase space generation in pp collisions is suggested and compared to model predictions using an example of the PHQMD generator.