Analysis of charged hadrons’ transverse momentum distributions in p + Pb and Xe + Xe collisions at LHC energies

Abstract

This paper is focused on comparative analysis of transverse momentum ( pT ) distributions across two different sets of experimental data from ALICE at the LHC, juxtaposing with the Monte-Carlo models EPOS-LHC and EPOS 1.99 simulations. The chosen collision sets have approximately same per nucleon energy. We analyze the transverse momentum spectra of hadrons ( π++π−, K++K− and p+p¯ ) in p+Pb collisions at sNN= 5.02 TeV, and Xe + Xe collisions at sNN= 5.44 TeV spanning a rapidity range of 0 < yCM < 0.5, centrality of 0 to 5% (the most central or head-on collisions). Analysis of the Hadrons yield is crucial for understanding the mechanism of underlying hadronization in the hot and dense quark matter produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The experimental results are compared with the predictions of hydrodynamic models EPOS-LHC and EPOS-1.99. It is notably found that the maximum yields of various particles occur at low pT. Furthermore, the comparison showed a slightly better agreement between experimental results and the predictions of the EPOS-LHC as opposed to that of EPOS-1.99. The EPOS-LHC model significantly shows an enhanced agreement with experimental results in the case of Xe+Xe collisions as compared to p+Pb collisions.