Study of cumulants in pp collisions at the LHC using PYTHIA

Abstract

In recent years proton-proton (pp) collisions have attracted a lot of attention since results show signs of the formation of a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The latter was believed to form only in collisions between heavy ions. This study focuses on a model used to describe the physics of pp collisions and separates events based on the topology of the emission of final state particles. For these categories of events, I report on the values of flow harmonics analysed with a sophisticated multi-particle cumulant technique. I find significant non-zero values for the second harmonic which can be caused by the topology of a pp collision. This bias should be studied and understood thoroughly before concluding that the experimental measurements point to the creation of a QGP in pp collisions.