The centrality dependence of charged-hadron production in relativistic
heavy-ion collisions at LHC energies is investigated in a
nonequilibrium-statistical relativistic diffusion model (RDM) with three
sources. Theoretical pseudorapidity distributions are compared with preliminary
PbPb ALICE data at LHC energy of sqrt(s_NN) = 2.76 TeV for seven centralities,
and a previous RDM prediction for this energy is confronted with the data.
Refined predictions for 5.52 TeV PbPb based on RDM parameter extrapolations are
presented.Comment: 8 Pages, 5 figures, Phys. Rev. C, in pres