Multiplicity-dependent Hadron Enhancement in High-Energy pp and p-Pb Collisions within an Effective Mass-Scale Framework

Abstract

The multiplicity dependence of identified hadron yield ratios in high-energy pp and p-Pb collisions has commonly been interpreted in terms of strangeness-driven scaling and canonical suppression effects. In this work, we investigate whether the observed enhancement hierarchy may also admit a complementary phenomenological organization involving effective hadronic and valence-quark mass scales relative to a pion baseline. A simultaneous description of non-strange, strange, and multi-strange hadron-to-pion ratios is performed for pp collisions at \sqrt{s} = 7 TeV and p-Pb collisions at \sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV using an effective mass-scale parametrization. The stability of the parametrization is tested through reduced \chi^{2} values, pull distributions, parameter correlations, information-criterion comparisons, cross-system predictions, multiplicity-range variations, and studies of observables not included in the fit. Additional investigations involving relative enhancement patterns and hidden-strangeness \phi mesons are used to examine the extent to which the observed hierarchy is uniquely characterized by simple open-strangeness ordering. The analysis indicates that the multiplicity dependence of identified hadron production can be organized phenomenologically through an interplay of open strangeness, hadron species dependence, hidden-strangeness structure, and effective mass-related scales. The present framework should be interpreted as a complementary phenomenological description rather than as a microscopic theory of hadron production.