Kaon production in high multiplicity events at the LHC

Abstract

The production of the $K_S^0$ meson in high multiplicity $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=$ 13 TeV is investigated considering the hybrid formalism and the solution of the running coupling Balitsky - Kovchegov equation. The associated cross section is estimated and compared with the experimental data for the transverse momentum spectrum. Moreover, we analyze the self-normalized yields of $K_S^0$ mesons as a function of the multiplicity of coproduced charged hadrons and demonstrate that a steep increasing is theoretically predicted. A comparison with the ALICE data is presented considering two distinct solutions of the BK equation.

Comments: 8 pages, 5 figures. Improved version to be published in Physical Review C