Average transverse momentum of hadrons in proton-nucleus collisions in the wounded nucleon model

Understand

In the wounded nucleon model, a proton-nucleus (p+A) collision is a superposition of independent nucleon-nucleon collisions.

• We use this model to calculate the average transverse momentum of pions, kaons and protons in high energy p+A collisions.
• For the same number of produced particles, because the number of participants differs, in the wounded nucleon model the transverse momentum of hadrons can differ between p+p and p+A collisions.
• In this model we find that the average transverse momentum in high multiplicity p+A collisions depends weakly on the number of produced particles, and underestimates the preliminary experimental data at the LHC.