The charged particle production in proton-proton collisions is studied with the LHCb detector at a centre-of-mass energy of ${\sqrt{s} =7}$TeV in different intervals of pseudorapidity $\eta$. The charged particles are reconstructed close to the interaction region in the vertex detector, which provides high reconstruction efficiency in the $\eta$ ranges $-2.5<\eta<-2.0$ and $2.0<\eta<4.5$. The data were taken with a minimum bias trigger, only requiring one or more reconstructed tracks in the vertex detector. By selecting an event sample with at least one track with a transverse momentum greater than 1 GeV/c a hard QCD subsample is investigated. Several event generators are compared with the data; none are able to describe fully the multiplicity distributions or the charged particle density distribution as a function of $\eta$. In general, the models underestimate the charged particle production.
Charged particle multiplicity distribution in minimum bias events for different pseudorapidity bins. The first quoted uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.
Charged particle multiplicity distribution in hard QCD events for different pseudorapidity bins. The first quoted uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.
Charged particle multiplicity distribution for minimum bias events in the full pseudorapidity range. The first quoted uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic.
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