Fragmentation of two repelling Lund strings

Abstract

Motivated by recent discoveries of flow-like effects in pp collisions, and noting that multiple string systems can form and hadronize simultaneously in such collisions, we develop a simple model for the repulsive interaction between two Lund strings with a positive (colour-oriented) overlap in rapidity. The model is formulated in momentum space and is based on a postulate of a constant net transverse momentum being acquired per unit of overlap along a common rapidity direction. To conserve energy, the strings shrink in the longitudinal direction, essentially converting a portion of the string invariant mass m^2m2 into p_\perp^2p⊥2 for constant m_\perp^2 = m^2 + p_\perp^2m⊥2=m2+p⊥2 for each string. The reduction in string invariant mass implies a reduced overall multiplicity of produced hadrons; the increase in p_\perp^2p⊥2 is local and only affects hadrons in the overlapping region. Starting from the simplest case of two symmetric and parallel strings with massless endpoints, we generalize to progressively more complicated configurations. We present an implementation of this model in the Pythia event generator and use it to illustrate the effects on hadron p_\perpp⊥ distributions and dihadron azimuthal correlations, contrasting it with the current version of the “shoving” model implemented in the same generator.