A test of strangeness quantum number conservation in proton-proton collisions

Abstract The study delves into the production of (multi-) strange hadrons in proton-proton collisions at LHC. Novel observables are proposed to distinguish between Epos4 , based on core-corona separation between a thermalised QGP phase and a vacuum phase with global strangeness conservation, and Pythia 8.3 , based on microscopic interactions between Lund strings that conserve strangeness locally. Correlations between a $$\phi $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>ϕ</mml:mi> </mml:math> meson and (multi-)strange hadrons are shown to be an excellent discriminator between the two types of models.