In this work, we propose a tool to reveal the origin of the collective-like phenomena observed in proton-proton collisions. We exploit the fundamental difference between the underlying mechanisms, color reconnection (CR) and hydrodynamics, which produce radial flow patterns in PYTHIA 8 and EPOS 3, respectively. Namely, the strength of the coupling between the soft and hard components which by construction is larger in PYTHIA 8 than in EPOS 3. We, therefore, study the transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) distributions of charged pions, kaons and (anti)protons as a function of the event multiplicity and the transverse momentum of the leading jet ($p_{\rm T}^{\rm jet}$), being all of them determined within a pseudorapidity interval of $|\eta|<1$. Quantitative and qualitative differences between PYTHIA 8 and EPOS 3 are found in the $p_{\rm T}$ spectra when (for a given multiplicity class) the leading jet $p_{\rm T}$ is increased. In addition, we show that for low-multiplicity events jets can produce radial flow-like behaviour. We propose to perform a similar analysis using data from RHIC and LHC.

Reference: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.04784