Monte Carlo Glauber wounded nucleon model with meson cloud

Understand

We study the effect of the nucleon meson cloud on predictions of the Monte Carlo Glauber wounded nucleon model for $AA$, $pA$, and $pp$ collisions.

• From the analysis of the data on the charged multiplicity density in $AA$ collisions we find that the meson-baryon Fock component reduces the required fraction of binary collisions by a factor of $\sim 2$ for Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s}=0.2$ TeV and $\sim 1.5$ for Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s}=2.76$ TeV.
• For central $AA$ collisions the meson cloud can increase the multiplicity density by $\sim 16-18$\%.
• We give predictions for the midrapidity charged multiplicity density in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s}=5.02$ TeV for the future LHC run 2.