Monte-Carlo Study Of Higher-Order Cumulants of Net-Particle Distributions in $p+p$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV

Abstract

Measurement of higher order cumulants of the distributions of conserved quantities, like net-charge, net-baryon and net-strangeness in heavy-ion collisions, is proposed as a sensitive tool to determine the freeze-out parameters and the nature of phase transitions at the LHC energies. Baseline measurements for heavy-ion collisions are essential to understand the experimental measurements. Recently, several experimental observations have shown some QGP-like scenarios in small systems (pp collisions). We report the first Monte-Carlo study of the measurements of cumulants and their ratios for net-charge, net-hadron, net-kaon, net-baryon, and net-proton distributions in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}$=13 TeV using pQCD models like Pythia8 and Herwig. We also discuss the effect of different particle production mechanisms on the higher-order cumulants. This simulation study will serve as a baseline for future measurements at the LHC. Furthermore, it will shed more light on the measurement of cumulants and the connection between small systems and heavy-ion collisions at the LHC.