Measurements of long-range azimuthal correlations and strangeness enhancement in small systems such as pp and p--Pb collisions have revealed features reminiscent of nucleus--nucleus interactions, raising the question of whether genuine QGP droplets are formed. In this work, we study jet--medium interactions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 5.02$ TeV by analyzing particle production with respect to the highest-$p_{\mathrm{T}}$ particle. The jet-like yield is obtained from the toward region after subtraction of the transverse contribution, which acts as a proxy for medium effects. Comparisons of \textsc{Pythia}8, AMPT, and EPOS4 show that in pp collisions, yields are strongly modified at $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{trig}} < 8$ GeV/$c$ due to color reconnection and hydrodynamics, while AMPT predicts medium-like modifications over the full $p_{\mathrm{T}}$ range. In p--Pb, AMPT with string melting reproduces the dip in the pp/p--Pb ratio observed by ALICE at low $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{trig}}$, consistent with medium-driven behavior. We further demonstrate that high-$p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{trig}}$ triggers ($>8$ GeV/$c$) reduce underlying-event biases, allowing a cleaner separation of jet and medium effects. These findings indicate that the strangeness enhancement reported in jet-like yields at low $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{trig}}$ may predominantly reflect collective dynamics rather than genuine jet contributions. Finally, we address the interpretation of finite $v_{2}$ observed in high-multiplicity pp collisions by ALICE, showing that multi-parton interaction and flattenicity-dependent long-range correlations provide a means to disentangle residual jet correlations and event selection biases from genuine collective effects.

Dushmanta.Sahu@cern.ch

Dushmanta Sahu