Investigating the origin of strangeness enhancement in small systems through multi-differential analyses

The main goal of the ALICE experiment is to study the physics of strongly interacting matter, including the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The relative production of strange hadrons with respect to non-strange hadrons in heavy-ion collisions was historically considered as one of the signatures of QGP formation. However, measurements at the LHC in pp and p-Pb collisions have shown similar features to those observed in Pb-Pb, measuring an increase in the production of strange hadrons relative to pions with the charged-particle multiplicity in the event. In order to better understand the role of the event multiplicity to the observed enhancement in pp, two new complementary analyses have been performed. The first exploits the angular correlation between strange and high-pT hadrons in the event to classify in-jet and out-of-jet strangeness production. The second uses the concept of the effective energy available in the event for particle production which is estimated by an anti-correlation with the energy deposited in ALICE’s Zero Degree Calorimeters. The results suggest that strangeness enhancement emerges from the growth of the underlying event and is not connected to initial state properties.