On the Use of the Tsallis Distribution at LHC Energies

Understand

Numerous papers have appeared recently showing fits to transverse momentum ($p_T$) spectra measured at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in proton - proton collisions.This talk focuses on the fits extending to very large values of the transverse momentum with $p_T$ values up to 200 GeV/c as measured by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at $\sqrt{s}$ = 0.9 and 7 TeV.

• A thermodynamically consistent form of the Tsallis distribution is used for fitting the transverse momentum spectra at mid-rapidity.
• The fits based on the proposed distribution provide an excellent description over 14 orders of magnitude.
• Despite this success, an ambiguity is noted concerning the determination of the parameters in the Tsallis distribution.