Signatures of Flux Tube Fragmentation and Strangeness Correlations in pp Collisions

Abstract

In the fragmentation of a color flux tube in high-energy $pp$ collisions or $e^{+}$-$e^{-}$ annihilations, the production of $q$-$\bar{q}$ pairs along a color flux tube precedes the fragmentation of the tube. The local conservation laws in the production of these $q$-$\bar{q}$ pairs will lead to the correlations of adjacently produced hadrons. As a consequence, the fragmentation of a flux tube will yield a many-hadron correlation in the form of a chain of hadrons ordered in rapidity, with adjacent hadrons correlated in charges, flavor contents, and azimuthal angles. It will also lead to a two-hadron angular correlation between two hadrons with opposite charges or strangeness that is suppressed at $\Delta \varphi \sim 0$ but enhanced at $\Delta \varphi \sim \pi$, within a rapidity window $\Delta y$$\sim$$1/(dN/dy)$.

Comments: 4 pages, 3 figures, talk presented at 16th International Conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter, Berkeley, USA, June 27 to July 1, 2016