Particle production as a function of system size and underlying-event activity measured with ALICE at the LHC

High-energy collisions in ALICE allow for the study of soft and hard QCD particle production. The correlation between transverse momentum spectra and event multiplicity is a sensitive observable providing insights into the different production mechanisms. In these proceedings we report on this observable for unidentified charged-particles, obtained using a 2d-unfolding procedure. Particle production is compared at different collision energies, as well as for pp, p–Pb and Pb–Pb collisions at the same energy. In order to understand the role of autocorrelations in small systems, it was proposed to exploit the usage of the underlying event as a multiplicity estimator to factorize the hardest and the softer components of the events. For this purpose, in these proceedings the charged particle transverse momentum distributions are also presented as a function of underlying-event activity in pp collisions.