Charged Hadron Multiplicity at RHIC and LHC Energies from Color Glass Condensate

We investigate charged hadron production at RHIC and LHC energies in the framework of color glass condensate. Our study gives a very good description of the experimental data of inclusive charged hadron production in proton–proton collisions at both RHIC and LHC energies. The saturation scale is treated as a free parameter, which will reduce the uncertainties from fitting low-energy experimental data and the modeling of the saturation momentum. We find a reasonable value of the saturation scale Q_s ～1 GeV, which is consistent with the theoretical findings. The running coupling effect is taken into account, and it is found that it plays an important role in the description of the experimental data. We provide quantitative predictions of the rapidity dependence of the inclusive charged hadron production for the upcoming LHC experiment in proton–proton collisions at √s=14 TeV.