Hyperon/meson ratios in rare high-multiplicity $pp$ collisions at energies available at the Large Hadron Collider, and potential signatures for mini-quark-gluon plasma formation

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

Published 2012-03-29, updated 2012-09-26Version 2

We use the framework of the HIJING/B\=B v2.0 model to simulate high-multiplicity (HM) $p+p$ collision events at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to study observables sensitive to possible collective phenomena, such as strong longitudinal color fields (SLCF) modeled by an enhanced string tension ($\kappa$). We focus on the hyperon/meson yield ratios at center-of-mass (c.m.) energy $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV, in the transverse momentum region, $1 < p_T < 4 $ GeV/{\it c}. For minimum bias events these ratios are well described assuming an energy dependence $\kappa = \kappa(s)= \kappa_{0} (s/s_{0})^{0.04} {\rm GeV/fm}$ ($\kappa_{0}$= 1 GeV/fm), giving a value $\kappa = 2$ GeV/fm at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 TeV. We compare minimum bias (MB) events to simulated HM events assuming that $\kappa(MB)=2$ GeV/fm could grow to an extreme value of $\kappa(HM)=5$ GeV/fm that saturates the strangeness suppression factor. With this assumption the model predicts a very strong enhancement of (multi)strange baryon/meson ratios in HM events. If observed, such an enhancement could be also interpreted as a possible signature for formation in HM $p+p$ collision events of a deconfined but out of local thermal equilibrium {\em mini quark-gluon plasma} (mQGP).