The pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons in proton-lead collisions
at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energies √sNN = 5.02 and 8.16 TeV are presented.
The measurements are based on data samples collected by the CMS experiment at the
LHC. The number of primary charged hadrons produced in non-single-diffractive protonlead
collisions is determined in the pseudorapidity range |ηlab| < 2.4. The chargedhadron
multiplicity distributions are compared to the predictions from theoretical calculations
and Monte Carlo event generators. In the center-of-mass pseudorapidity range
|ηcm| < 0.5, the average charged-hadron multiplicity densities hdNch/dηcmi


|ηcm|
< 0.5 are
17.31 ± 0.01 (stat) ± 0.59 (syst) and 20.10 ± 0.01 (stat) ± 0.85(syst) at √sNN = 5.02 and
8.16 TeV, respectively. The particle densities per participant nucleon are compared to
similar measurements in proton-proton, proton-nucleus, and nucleus-nucleus collisions.