Strangeness Enhancement in Small Collision Systems at ALICE: Role of Hard and Soft Processes

Recent measurements in high-multiplicity proton–proton (\(pp\)) and proton–lead (\(p\)–Pb) collisions have exhibited features reminiscent of those observed in lead–lead (Pb–Pb) collisions. Among them, the observed enhancement of strange particle production as a function of multiplicity remains poorly understood. In order to probe the underlying mechanisms behind this phenomenon, we differentiate between strange hadrons originating from jets and those arising from soft processes. This is attained by using angular correlations between high transverse momentum charged particles and strange hadrons for \(K^0_S\), \({\mit \Xi }\), and \(\phi \) in \(pp\) collisions at \(\sqrt {s} = 13\) TeV and \(p\)–Pb collisions at \(\sqrt {s_{NN}} = 5.02\) TeV. We observe that strangeness enhancement in small collision systems grows smoothly with charged-particle multiplicity and is predominantly driven by soft processes, while hard processes’ contributions remain comparatively small. Abstract Published by the Jagiellonian University 2025 authors