Studies of φ Meson Production in Fixed-Target pNe Collisions at LHCb

This thesis presents the studies of the φ meson production in proton-Neon fixed-target collisions at a centre-of-mass energy sqrt{s_{NN}} = 68.5 GeV, using the LHCb detector at CERN. The proton-Neon dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 21.7 ± 1.4 nb^{-1}, collected in fixed-target mode in 2017 concurrently with proton-proton collision data. The φ meson events are identified in the detector through their decay into two oppositely charged kaons. The meson production cross section per nucleon is measured in kinematic bins of rapidity y and transverse momentum pT, within the ranges 2.50 < y < 4.29 and 800< pT < 6500 MeV/c. The results are compared to the predictions from the most common Monte Carlo event generators, which are found to underestimate the experimental values. This measurement offers valuable insights into strangeness production in confined nuclear matter. Furthermore, since the φ meson contains an s\bar{s} quark pair, it serves as a benchmark for strangeness production in deconfined matter, where an increase in production ratios could indicate the formation of Quark-Gluon Plasma.