Pinning down the origin of "strangeness enhancement" in the jet-like region of pp collisions with Monte Carlo simulations

A recent ALICE measurement reports a finite strangeness enhancement in the toward-leading region of high-multiplicity proton-proton collisions. In this work, the trigger transverse momentum, $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{t}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{g}}$, dependence is investigated using ${\mathrm{K}}_{\mathrm{S}}^0$ and ${\mathrm{\Xi }}^{\pm }$ production in PYTHIA8, with and without color ropes, and EPOS-LHC. For $3<p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{t}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{g}}<15$~GeV/$c$, EPOS-LHC and PYTHIA8 with color ropes exhibit a multiplicity-dependent increase of the toward-leading ${\mathrm{\Xi }}^{\pm }\mathrm{/}{\mathrm{K}}_{\mathrm{S}}^0$ ratio, while the rope-free PYTHIA8 baseline shows a weaker dependence. With increasing trigger momentum, the enhancement is strongly suppressed in EPOS-LHC for $p_{\mathrm{T}}^{\mathrm{t}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{g}}\gtrsim 10$~GeV/$c$, whereas it remains approximately unchanged in PYTHIA8 with color ropes. This contrasting behavior is consistent with a reduced core contribution in EPOS-LHC and a local string-overlap mechanism in PYTHIA8 with color ropes. The trigger transverse momentum thus provides a model-sensitive probe of the mechanisms contributing to the apparent strangeness enhancement in the jet-like region of the pp collisions.