Hadronization mechanisms and strange-particle production in inelastic proton-proton collisions at energies available at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron

We investigate the impact of various hadronization mechanisms on strange particle production in inelastic proton-proton collisions at energies available at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), utilizing four configurations of the pythia8 model. These configurations include the popcorn mode, facilitating complex baryonic interactions via increased string tension; the diquark mode, emphasizing direct baryon-antibaryon pair production; the thermal mode, which integrates fluctuations in internal string tension to model thermally influenced particle distributions; and the junction baryon mode, crucial for accurately simulating complex baryon formation. Our analysis addresses rapidity and transverse momentum (${p}_{T}$) distributions for primary strange (${K}_{s}^{0}, \mathrm{\ensuremath{\Lambda}}$), hidden strange ($\ensuremath{\phi}$), and multistrange (${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Xi}}}^{\ensuremath{-}}, {\overline{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Xi}}}}^{+}, {\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Xi}}}^{0}, {\overline{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Xi}}}}^{0}$) particles at 158 $\mathrm{GeV}\text{/}c$, and explores dynamics at lower beam energies (31, 40, and 80 $\mathrm{GeV}\text{/}c$) for primary and hidden strange particle production. Results indicate that the popcorn mode provides good agreement with experimental data for primary and multistrange particles but consistently underestimates $\ensuremath{\phi}$ production. The diquark mode tends to overestimate yields for ${K}_{s}^{0}$ and ${\overline{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Xi}}}}^{+}$, suggesting excessive energy allocation to strange quark generation. Conversely, the thermal mode exhibits robust performance across a wide range of collision energies, accurately reproducing rapidity and transverse momentum spectra for primary strange particles. Nevertheless, it demonstrates a tendency to overestimate multistrange baryon yields, possibly due to enhanced suppression mechanisms. Among the evaluated models, the thermal mode most effectively describes strange particle production, providing a reliable framework for understanding high-energy hadronic interactions, although further refinements are required to fully capture the intricacies of multistrange particle formation.