Universality of particle production and energy balance in hadronic and nuclear collisions

The multihadron production in nucleus-nucleus and (anti)proton-proton collisions is studied by exploring the collision-energy and centrality dependencies of the mean multiplicity in the existing data. The study is performed in the framework of the recently proposed effective-energy approach which combines the constituent quark picture and Landau hydrodynamics counting for the centrality-defined effective energy of participants. Within this approach, the multiplicity energy dependence and the pseudorapidity spectra from the most central nuclear collisions are well reproduced. The study of the multiplicity centrality dependence reveals a new scaling between the measured pseudorapidity spectra and the calculations. Using this scaling, called the energy balanced limiting fragmentation scaling, the pseudorapidity spectra are well reproduced for all centralities. The scaling clarifies some differences in the multiplicity and midrapidity density centrality dependence from RHIC and LHC. A similarity in the multiplicity energy dependence in the most central collisions and centrality data is shown. Predictions are drawn for the mean multiplicities to be measured in hadronic and heavy-ion collisions at the LHC.