Baryon anomaly and strong color fields in Pb+Pb collisions at 2.76A TeV at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

V. Topor Pop, M. Gyulassy, J. Barrette, C. Gale

Published 2011-05-19, updated 2011-10-17Version 3

With the HIJING/BBbar v2.0 heavy ion event generator, we explore the phenomenological consequences of several high parton density dynamical effects predicted in central Pb+Pb collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies. These include (1) jet quenching due to parton energy loss (dE/dx), (2) strangeness and hyperon enhancement due to strong longitudinal color field (SCF), and (3) enhancement of baryon-to-meson ratios due to baryon-anti-baryon junctions (JJbar) loops and SCF effects. The saturation/minijet cutoff scale p0(s)and effective string tension kappa(s,A) are constrained by our previous analysis of LHC p+p data and recent data on the charged multiplicity for Pb+Pb collisions reported by the ALICE collaboration. We predict the hadron flavor dependence (mesons and baryons) of the nuclear modification factor RAA(pT)$ and emphasize the possibility that the baryon anomaly could persist at the LHC up to pT=10 GeV, well beyond the range observed in central Au+Au collisions at RHIC energies.