Large transverse momenta in statistical models of high energy interactions

The creation of particles with large transverse momenta in high energyhadronic collisions is a long standing problem. The transition from small-(soft) to hard- parton scattering `high-pt' events is rather smooth. In thispaper we apply the non-extensive statistical framework to calculate transversemomentum distributions of long lived hadrons created at energies from low(sqrt(s)~10 GeV) to the highest energies available in collider experiments(sqrt(s)~2000 GeV). Satisfactory agreement with the experimental data isachieved. The systematic increase of the non-extensivity parameter with energyfound can be understood as phenomenological evidence for the increased role oflong range correlations in the hadronization process. Predictions concerning the rise of average transverse momenta up to thehighest cosmic ray energies are also given and discussed.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure