HIN-16-013 PreCWR Comments

Comments from Ferenc(paper v0)

C1:Do you have any other MC generator to compare to? Epos is only one. As far as I can understand Hijing is only used for estimating the DS efficiency?

C2:Since the data-MC comparison are based on Epos Lhc, you should devote a paragraph to the details and ideas built into that generator. Right now you only have "including collective flow in pp and pPb collisions".

C3:Particles vs tracks: these two appear often; is there a difference between the two or do you use them interchangeably? would be good to better differentiate.

C4:L 31: you say that low multiplicity region is inconclusive, but in the next sentence it is about "wide kinematic range". The two do not match.

C5:L 88-102: it would be important to make clear why you select pp and pPb events differently

C6:L 103: efficiency wrt what?

C7:L 103-112: again, why do you employ the DS selection for pPb, and a different one (inelastic?) for pp; needs a justification; not clear if by correcting to different collision selections (inelastic vs DS) how much bias or distortions you introduce

C8:L 133-141: can you somehow justify the choices, I mean the concrete values of the cuts? especially words on the decay length significance for Lambda (10) is needed

C9:L 148: you could argue here that q^B mimics the available phase space volume

C10:L 150: "good description" should be quantified

C11:L 158-: please indicate the overall/average reconstruction efficiency at a representative pT

C12:L 228: the DS and inelastic efficiencies come too late here; I would think that they should be mentioned where they were mentioned first

C13:Figs 3 and 4: what is the reason for Epos Lhc not describing the higher pT region for K0s and Lambda (maybe I missed that in the text)

C14:Figs 3 and 4: it would be great - to have more MC events - or if that is not possible then to smooth the Epos curves

C15:Summary: I understand that the various effects interfere, but some more solid conclusion are needed

L 4: overall strangeness

L 9-15: very long sentence, please split in two

L 73-75: theta and eta do not need a definition (check if you use theta later)

L 83: sqrt(sNN) and = etc have to much space in between

L 84: extra "

L 113: candidate

Table 1 and 2: what is the reason for missing values/empty cells? are the 0, negligible or something else? could indicate that with "--"

Ref 46 is published in PLB

Comments from Kong(paper v0)

C1:Please make sure that all the symbols or shorthands are defined the first time they show up, for example, - proton-proton to pp collisions (line 11) - proton, kaon, and pion, in the reconstruction section. Use them consistently. - GEANT4, find the right format and use it consistently and please double check with others.

C2:Figures: - remove the preliminary label - Fig.1, in the caption, mention what is ave.sigma. - Unify the font size, for example, figure.4 the "EPOS LHC Data" looks small. I suggest you compile the paper into your journal format (double column) and make sure your figures look ok in those format and unify all the styles and font size, to save time in a later stage. - on a gray scale, some of your band are not distinguishable

C3:Abstract:- do we need "as functions of pT"? Can transverse momentum spectra be function of something else? - not sure if you need to mention pT for transverse momentum, check with the rules

C4:In general, I still think the introduction needs some work. It seems to me that all the information are mentioned somewhere, but not in a straightforward order. For example, the motivation of doing a RpA is not given before you start defining the RpA. line 8-9, seems too general and simply "serves as baseline" means nothing to the reader, people may wonder "baseline of what". I encourage the analyzers to think more carefully about what motivates the RpA analysis or what motivates pA collisions in general.

C5:Later starting from line 21, it starts to talk about the strangeness production in small systems, and that, in my opinion, is part of your analysis motivation, which can be mentioned earlier at the second paragraph. So does those lines that talk about "collectivity" in small systems. Therefore, I suggest to rearrange the introduction so the paper can be easier to understand.

line 3-4: "The strangeness enhancement"

line 5: "proton-proton (pp)"

line 22: "CMS[21] and ALICE[22] experiment"

line 29-30: the collectivity seems to come from nowhere and in between discussion of RpPb. See general comment.

line 40: Reference? Maybe add a sentence explicitly saying what the RpPb expectation is? below 1 or greater 1? similar to line 45

line 44: do we need to define x?

line 48: "forward (p-going) and backward (Pb-going) rapidity regions."

line 84: typo " line 162: ", while up to 4\% of the lambda candidates are found to be nonprompt from simulations." line 223, ", <Ncoll> = 6.9, which is obtained from a Glauber MC simulation[7,8]."

line 226-229, does this paragraph imply that the spectra is corrected by the DS events? It seems like only the difference between DS and inelastic collisions is mentioned, but which one is the result corrected for?

Comments from Michael (paper v2)

C1:6th line of abstract say

"The observed values of RpPb are larger than unity for baryons in the pT range from 3 to 6 GeV, and this enhancement is larger for multistrange baryons which also have larger mass."

to

"For Ko mesons RpPb increases from Pt = 0.5 to 3 GeV but is consistent with unity for Pt> 3 GeV. In the pT range from 3 to 6 GeV, RpPb is above unity for the three baryons with R_pPb^Omega> R_pPb^Xi>R_pPb^Lambda > R_pPb^K0.

C2:The asymmetries increase away from mid-rapidity and for up to 2.0 GeV are found to be larger for K0 and Lambda than for charged hadrons. For pT> 2.0 GeV the asymmetries are greater for Lambda than for K0.

C3:L11 Delete the sentence "All these results make pPb collisions worth to be studied thoroughly."

C4:Paragraph 2 should be broken at line 18 since here you start to introduce RpPb.

Comments from Vicki (LE) (paper v3)

File for all the comments.

selected comments:

C1:L17-20: Particle production in pA and dA as compared to pp collisions has been extensively studied at both RHIC [16–19] and the LHC [20–22] using the nuclear modification factor RAB. For collisions between two nuclei, …

C2:L109-110: About 99% of pPb events are selected with respect to the DS events from simulations… Do you mean that 99% of the pPb events are selected as DS events? Please write this more clearly.

C3:L113: are corrected to inelastic collisions… Do you mean “are corrected for inelastic collisions”? Please clarify.