Performance of Monte Carlo Event Generators of pp Collisions at NICA Energies

This paper presents an overview of Monte Carlo (MC) event generators for simulation of proton-proton collisions along with the results on hadron production at nuclotron-based ion collider facility (NICA) energies. Namely, mean multiplicities, mean transverse momenta, and rapidity distributions of p(\(\bar {p}\)), π^±, K^± at different collision energies are presented. We also study two-particle angular correlations for stable charged particles. Results of simulations with PYTHIA, EPOS, SMASH, and UrQMD event generators are compared to available data. Connections of studied quantities with physics mechanisms in MC generators are discussed. We suggest a tuned set of parameters to address observed discrepancies between data and PYTHIA.