Springer; Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
Abstract
The single inclusive spectrum of charged particles with transverse momenta pT = 3 – 150 GeV/c measured at midrapidity by the CDF experiment in proton-antiproton (p−pˉ) collisions at s=1.96 TeV is compared to next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD calculations using the most recent parametrizations of the parton distributions and parton-to-hadron fragmentation functions. Above pT ≈ 20 GeV/c, there is a very sizeable disagreement of the Tevatron data compared to the NLO predictions and to xT-scaling expectations, suggesting a problem in the experimental data. We also present the predictions for the pT-differential charged hadron spectra and the associated theoretical uncertainties for proton-proton (p-p) collisions at LHC energies (s=0.9−14 TeV). Two procedures to estimate the charged hadron spectra at LHC heavy-ion collision energies (s=2.76), 5.5 TeV) from p-p measurements are suggested