Speaker
Description
Strange hadron production is an important probe of hadronization in hadron collisions. With its precise vertex reconstruction and particle identification capabilities, the LHCb detector is ideally suited to study strangeness production. LHCb's forward geometry provides access to strange hadrons in an unexplored kinematic regime, and the SMOG system allows LHCb to study strangeness production in the highest energy fixed-target collisions ever produced in a laboratory. In addition, recent studies have linked the polarization of hyperons to the process of hadronization, and the origin of hyperon polarization from unpolarized proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions is not yet fully understood. We present recent LHCb measurements of strangeness enhancement in charm hadron production and hyperon polarization measurements in collider and fixed-target modes. We also discuss their implications for hadronization modification in small collision systems, as well as transverse-momentum-dependent parton distributions and fragmentation functions.
