Abstract. Proton-nucleus collisions are studied in order to disentangle initial state effects, already present in cold nuclear matter, from final state effects, that are associated to the hot and strongly interacting medium created in A-A collisions. However, after the 2013 p-Pb data taking at LHC, the importance of p-A collisions on their own has been acknowledged. Several measurements clearly showed that p-A collisions cannot simply be explained by an incoherent superposition of proton-nucleon collisions, but indicate the presence of coherent and collective effects, with a strong dependence on the collision geometry. These measurements pointed out the need for a detailed characterization of the collision geometry. Typically, parameters such as the number of binary collisions N coll or the number of participating nucleons N part are used to characterize the centrality. In nucleus-nucleus interactions the centrality is usually estimated by measuring the charged particle multiplicity. However, in contrast to A-A, in p-A collisions the large fluctuations in a much reduced multiplicity environment generate a dynamical bias in centrality classes based on particle multiplicity measurement. The centrality determination is critically addressed and a different approach to extract the average N coll values, needed to compare p-A to pp data, is presented. The centrality dependence of primary charged-particle production and of transverse momentum distributions in p-A collisions at √ s NN = 5.02 TeV measured by ALICE are presented.
IntroductionProton-lead collisions are an essential component of the heavy ion programme at LHC. These collisions are needed as a baseline in the understanding of cold nuclear matter effects and therefore in the interpretation of the nucleus-nucleus data. However, the importance of p-Pb collisions at LHC on their own has soon been recognized. In fact several measurements [1]- [4] clearly indicate that p-Pb collisions can not be explained as a simple incoherent superposition of proton-nucleon collisions, but rather indicate the onset of collective effects with a strong collision geometry dependence. The study of key observables as a function of centrality poses a crucial focus on the centrality determination. One of the main observables used to study p-A collisions is the nuclear modification factor: R pA = dN p−Pb /dp T < N coll > ·dN pp /dp T (1) Article available at