Particle production and entropy measurement in ALICE

University of Houston

^* e-mail: alek.hutson@cern.ch

Published online: 26 June 2024

Abstract

One of the main goals in the study of hadronic interactions at LHC energies is the attempt to characterize the mechanisms involved in particle production in different regimes. The charged-particle multiplicity is one of the most interesting observables in these kind of studies. Measurements of chargedparticle pseudorapidity densities in pp collisions at √s = 13.6 TeV are presented, for the first time. Furthermore, we present a method for better understanding the collision dynamics. On the one hand, the pseudorapidity dependence of charged-particle production provides information on the partonic structure of the colliding hadrons and is sensitive to non-linear QCD evolution in the initial state. On the other hand to understand the thermal-like behavior and particle yields in pp collisions, a possible approach is to address the principles of quantum states and their entanglement in the produced system. The entanglement in the initial state has a measurable effect on the evolution of the system and is the driving mechanism behind the thermal-like behavior and particle yields observed. We describe a method to understand the level of entanglement in the initial and final states of the collision using a calculation of entropy, the final-state entropy being calculated from multiplicity distributions.