Can Transverse Mass Scaling Shed Light on the Event-Activity Dependence of $Υ$ Mesons Production at LHC?

Abstract

Transverse mass scaling has been observed for a wide range of particle species in proton-proton collisions at various energies from the SPS to RHIC and the LHC. The observed scaling is known to be different for baryons and mesons, and this work presents a comprehensive study of the transverse mass scaling of mesons at LHC energies with a focus on heavier mesons. The study demonstrates patterns in the scaling properties of mesons, which are related to the particle quark content. In particular, light species and ground-state quarkonia obey the same scaling, whereas open flavor particles deviate from it because their spectra are significantly harder. The magnitude of deviation depends on the flavor of the heaviest quark in the meson. By extending the transverse mass scaling assumption to the excited bottomonia states, it is observed that the measured cross sections of Υ(2S) and Υ(3S) are reduced by factors of 1.6 and 2.4 compared to the expectation from the scaling.