A Framework for Hadronic Rescattering in pp Collisions

In this article, a framework for hadronic rescattering in the general-purpose Pythia event generator is introduced. The starting point is the recently presented space-time picture of the hadronization process. It is now extended with a tracing of the subsequent motion of the primary hadrons, including both subsequent scattering processes among them and decays of them. The major new component is cross-section parameterizations for a range of possible hadron-hadron combinations, applicable from threshold energies upwards. The production dynamics in these collisions has also been extended to cope with different kinds of low-energy processes. The properties of the model are studied, and some first comparisons with LHC pp data are presented. Whereas it turns out that approximately half of all final particles participated in rescatterings, the net effects in pp events are still rather limited, and only striking in a few distributions. The new code opens up for several future studies, however, such as effects in pA and AA collisions.