The analysis of the momentum difference between charged hadrons in high-energy proton-proton collisions is performed in order to study coherent particle production. The observed correlation pattern agrees with a model of a helical QCD string fragmenting into a chain of ground-state hadrons. A threshold momentum difference in the production of adjacent pairs of charged hadrons is observed, in agreement with model predictions. The presence of low-mass hadron chains also explains the emergence of charge-combination-dependent two-particle correlations commonly attributed to Bose-Einstein interference. The data sample consists of 190 μb-1 of minimum-bias events collected with proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy s=7 TeV in the early low-luminosity data taking with the ATLAS detector at the LHC.

Aaboud, M., Aad, G., Abbott, B., Abdinov, O., Abeloos, B., Abidi, S.H., et al. (2017). Study of ordered hadron chains with the ATLAS detector. PHYSICAL REVIEW D, 96(9) [10.1103/PhysRevD.96.092008].

Study of ordered hadron chains with the ATLAS detector

Ceradini F.;Di Micco B.;Di Nardo R.;Orestano D.;Petrucci F.;