formation, it makes signals for a phase transition more difficult to interpret. It has also been suggested that ropes may initiate the formation of a quark–gluon plasma [@Kajantie:1985jh; @Gyulassy:1986jq; @Gatoff:1987uf; @Braun:1997ch]. At LHC energies many overlapping strings are also expected in $pp$ scattering, where plasma formation normally is not expected. In this paper we want to study string interference effects in $pp$ scattering, with the aim to get a better understanding of the dynamics in $pp$ collisions, and simultaneously get a tool to estimate possible rope effects in nucleus collisions.

For a quantitative estimate of interaction between neighbouring strings, we believe it is essential to have a description formulated in transverse coordinate space. Such a formulation is also suitable for including effects of saturation for small $x$ and high gluon densities. Here we will use the Lund dipole cascade model implemented in the event generator [@Avsar:2005iz; @Flensburg:2011kk]. This model is based on a formulation of BFKL dynamics in transverse coordinate space, including non-leading-log and saturation effects, and also taking fluctuations and correlations into account.[^2]

The Lund string hadronization model [@Andersson:1983jt; @Andersson:1979ij][^3], which has been particularly successful in describing data from $e^+e^-$ annihilation at LEP [@Hamacher:1995df; @Sjostrand:2014zea], is based on the 