Thermal radiation and inclusive production in the running coupling $$k_T$$-factorization approach

The characteristics of the thermal radiation are investigated using a two-component model, with the hard component being described by the Color Glass Condensate formalism. The inclusive transverse momentum spectra of charged hadrons produced in proton–proton and proton–nucleus collisions at LHC energies and large - $$p_T$$ are estimated using the running coupling $$k_T$$ -factorization formula and the solution of the Balitsky–Kovchegov equation. Our results indicate that the thermal term is necessary to describe the experimental data and that the effective thermal temperature has an energy dependence similar to the saturation scale. We demonstrate that the enhancement of the thermal temperature in pPb collisions is consistent with that predicted by the saturation scale.