Baryon production at LHC energies and very high energy cosmic ray spectra

P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute, Moscow, Russia

^a e-mail: piskoun@sci.lebedev.ru

Published online: 4 August 2015

Abstract

The spectra of baryons at LHC can explain the features of CR proton spectra. It seems important to study all baryon data that are available from collider experiments in a wide range of energies. Transverse momentum spectra of baryons from RHIC (√(s) = 62 and 200 GeV) and LHC experiments (√(s) = 0.9 and 7 TeV) have been considered. It is seen that the slope of low p_T distributions is changing with energy. The QGSM fit of distributions gives the average transverse momenta which behave approximately as s^0.06 that is similar to the previously observed behavior of Λ baryon spectra. This slow growing of <p_T> in hadron interactions of VHE in CR detectors cannot cause the “knee” in experimental proton spectra. In addition, the available data on Λ_c production from LHCb at √s = 7 TeV were also studied. The preliminary dependence of hadron average transverse momenta on their masses at the LHC energy is presented. The possible source of cosmic ray antiparticle-to-particle ratios that are growing with energy was also analyzed. The growing ratios are the result of local leading asymmetry for spectra of baryons and antibaryons that are produced in the kinematical region of proton target fragmentation. This asymmetry of baryon spectra, as they are converted into the energy distributions in the laboratory system, seems to result in an increasing ratio of secondary antiparticle-to-particle spectra up to a few hundreds of GeV. This conclusion makes important the particle production at the sources of very high energy cosmic rays where the VHE interactions with positive matter target may take place.