Measurement of <i>φ</i>(1020) meson production in fixed-target <i>p</i>Ne collisions at √sNN=68<i>.</i>5 GeV

A bstract The first measurement of ϕ (1020) meson production in fixed-target p Ne collisions at $$ \sqrt{s_{NN}} $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msqrt> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> <mml:mi>NN</mml:mi> </mml:msub> </mml:msqrt> </mml:math> = 68 . 5 GeV is presented. The ϕ (1020) mesons are reconstructed in their K + K − decay in a data sample consisting of proton collisions on neon nuclei at rest, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 21 . 7 ± 1 . 4 nb − 1 , collected by the LHCb detector at CERN. The ϕ (1020) production cross-section in the centre-of-mass rapidity range of − 1 . 8 &lt; y * &lt; 0 and transverse momentum range of 800 &lt; p T &lt; 6500 MeV/ c is found to be σ = 182 . 7 ± 2 . 7 (stat.) ± 14 . 1 (syst) μ b/nucleon. A double-differential measurement of the cross-section is also provided in four regions of rapidity and six regions of transverse momentum of the ϕ (1020) meson and compared with the predictions from Pythia and EPOS4, which are found to underestimate the experimental values.