Prospects for strangeness production in p-p collisions at LHC

Prospects for strangeness production in p-p collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are discussed within the statistical model. Firstly, the system size and the energy dependence of the model parameters are extracted from existing data and extrapolated to LHC energy. Particular attention is paid to demonstrate that the chemical decoupling temperature is independent of the system size. In the energy regime investigated so far, strangeness production in p-p interactions is strongly influenced by the canonical suppression effects. At LHC energies, this influence might be reduced. Particle ratios with particular sensitivity to canonical effects are indicated. Secondly, the relation between the strangeness production and the charged-particle multiplicity in p-p interactions is investigated. In this context the multiplicity dependence studied at Tevatron is of particular interest. There, the trend in relative strangeness production known from centrality-dependent heavy-ion collisions is not seen in multiplicity selected p-p interactions. However, the conclusion from the Tevatron measurements is based on rather limited data samples with low statistics and number of observables. We argue that there is an absolute need at LHC to measure strangeness production in events with different multiplicities to possibly disentangle relations and differences between particle production in p-p and heavy-ion collisions.