Charged particle multiplicities in $pp$ interactions at $\sqrts=0.9$, 2.36, and 7 TeV

Measurements of primary charged hadron multiplicity distributions are pre-sented for non-single-diffractive events in proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energiesof√s= 0.9, 2.36, and 7 TeV, in five pseudorapidity ranges from|η|<0.5 to|η|<2.4.The data were collected with the minimum-bias trigger of the CMS experiment during theLHC commissioning runs in 2009 and the 7 TeV run in 2010. The multiplicity distributionat√s= 0.9 TeV is in agreement with previous measurements. At higher energies the in-crease of the mean multiplicity with√sis underestimated by most event generators. Theaverage transverse momentum as a function of the multiplicity is also presented. The mea-surement of higher-order moments of the multiplicity distribution confirms the violation ofKoba-Nielsen-Olesen scaling that has been observed at lower energies