Energy dependence of the transverse momentum distributions of charged particles in pp collisions measured by ALICE

Abstract

Differential cross sections of charged particles in inelastic pp collisions as a function of \(p_T\) have been measured at \(\sqrt{s}\) = 0.9, 2.76 and 7 TeV at the LHC. The \(p_T\) spectra are compared to NLO-pQCD calculations. Though the differential cross section for an individual \(\sqrt{s}\) cannot be described by NLO-pQCD, the relative increase of cross section with \(\sqrt{s}\) is in agreement with NLO-pQCD. Based on these measurements and observations, procedures are discussed to construct pp reference spectra at \(\sqrt{s}\) = 2.76 and 5.02 TeV up to \(p_T\) = 50 GeV/c as required for the calculation of the nuclear modification factor in nucleus-nucleus and proton-nucleus collisions.