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[References.: 39 tit.]

Measurements of the pseudorapidity distributions of charged hadrons produced in xenon-xenon collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of are presented. The measurements are based on data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The yield of primary charged hadrons produced in xenon-xenon collisions in the pseudorapidity range is determined using the silicon pixel detector in the CMS tracking system. For the 5% most central collisions, the charged-hadron pseudorapidity density in the midrapidity region is found to be , with a negligible statistical uncertainty. The rapidity distribution of charged hadrons is also presented in the range and is found to be independent of rapidity around . Existing Monte-Carlo event generators are unable to simultaneously describe both results. Comparisons of charged-hadron multiplicities between xenon-xenon and lead-lead collisions at similar collision energies show that particle production at midrapidity is strongly dependent on the collision geometry in addition to the system size and collision energy.