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August 26, 2026The European Physical Journal A0 citationsOpen Access

Internal energy of the medium formed in pp collisions

JTJ. Alonso TlaliDHDiana Rosales HerreraJGJesús Ricardo Alvarado García

Key Points

  • To analyze the thermostatistical properties and determine the internal energy of the medium produced in minimum bias proton-proton collisions at LHC energies.
  • Analyzed charged particle transverse momentum (pT) spectra from minimum bias proton-proton collisions reported by the ALICE Collaboration across various LHC energies.
  • Applied normalized pT spectra as probability density functions to derive Shannon entropy, Bjorken-type energy estimators, and low-pT slope temperatures using Hagedorn and Tricomi nonextensive functions.
  • Solved the fundamental thermodynamic relation dE/dT = C (where C = T dS/dT) to evaluate internal energy and heat capacity.
  • Demonstrated that the internal energy of the medium exhibits nonlinear behavior across LHC energies, indicating that effective degrees of freedom cannot be explained by simple flavor counting.
  • Found that systems created in proton-proton collisions deviate from the ideal gas framework, providing a thermodynamic explanation for high-pT hadron production in pp, e-p, and e+e- collisions.

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we perform a thermostatistical analysis of the charged particles produced in minimum bias pp collisions across different energies available at the LHC-CERN reported by the ALICE Collaboration. To this end, we adopted the normalized p_ T p T spectrum as the probability density function governing the p_ T p T microstates of the produced hadrons, from which we can compute the entropy following the Shannon definition or the average p_ T p T as the Bjorken-type energy estimator. Additionally, we estimate the temperature from the slope of the p_ T p T spectrum at low p_ T p T values. We use the Hagedorn and Tricomi functions to describe the p_ T p T spectrum within a nonextensive approach and determine consistent thermodynamic frameworks by solving the fundamental relation dE/dT=C d E / d T = C, where C=TdS/dT C = T d S / d T is the heat capacity. We found that the internal energy behaves nonlinearly at LHC energies, indicating that the count of degrees of freedom is more complex than simply adding the number of flavors present in the hadron production. The main implication of our results is that the systems produced in pp collisions depart from the ideal gas picture and explain why the production of high p_ T p T hadrons has always been observed, even in earlier experiments, which may also encompass other experiments colliding e ^- - p or e ^+ + e ^- -.

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Cite This Study

Tlali et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a8e9b21451774b83f3b3b9dhttps://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-026-01947-9
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