Study of Monte Carlo event generators for proton-proton collisions at LHC energies in the forward region *

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>In this paper we present a comparative study between PYTHIA, EPOS, QGSJET, and SIBYLL generators. The global event observables considered are the charged energy flow, charged particle distributions, charged hadron production ratios and <jats:italic>V</jats:italic> <jats:sup>0</jats:sup> ratios. The study is performed in the LHCb and TOTEM fiducial phase spaces on minimum bias simulated data samples for <jats:italic>pp</jats:italic> collisions at <jats:inline-formula> <jats:tex-math><?CDATA $\sqrt{s}$?></jats:tex-math> <jats:inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="cpc_43_8_083001_M1.jpg" xlink:type="simple" /> </jats:inline-formula> = 7 TeV , using the reference measurements from these experiments. In the majority of cases, the measurements are within a band defined by the most extreme predictions. The observed differences between the predictions and the measurements seem to be, in most part, caused by extrapolation from the central pseudorapidity region (|<jats:italic>η</jats:italic>| <jats:inline-formula> <jats:tex-math><?CDATA $\leqslant$?></jats:tex-math> <jats:inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="cpc_43_8_083001_M1-1.jpg" xlink:type="simple" /> </jats:inline-formula> 2.5), in which the generators were mainly tuned. </jats:p>