On Event-by-Event Fluctuations in Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

We demonstrate that a new type of analysis in heavy-ion collisions, based on an event-by-event analysis of the transverse momentum distribution, allows us to obtain information on secondary interactions and collective behaviour that is not available from the inclusive spectra. Using a random walk model as a simple phenomenological description of initial state scattering in collisions with heavy nuclei, we show that the event-by-event measurement allows a quantitative determination of this effect, well within the resolution achievable with the new generation of large acceptance hadron spectrometers. The preliminary data of the NA49 collaboration on transverse momentum fluctuations indicate qualitatively different behaviour than that obtained within the random walk model. The results are discussed in relation to the thermodynamic and hydrodynamic description of nuclear collisions.

9 pages

References in corpus (2)

• Equation of State, Radial Flow and Freeze-out in High Energy Heavy Ion Collisions
• Event-by-event analysis of heavy ion collisions and thermodynamical fluctuations

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Event-by-event fluctuations of the mean transverse momentum in 40, 80, and 158 A GeV/c Pb-Au collisions
• Event-wise mean p_t fluctuations in Au-Au collisions at sqrt{s_{NN}} = 130 GeV
• Generalizing Phi-measure of event-by-event fluctuations in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
• Hadronization geometry from net-charge angular correlations on momentum subspace ($\eta ,\varphi$) in Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=130$ GeV
• The effects of nonextensive statistics on fluctuations investigated in event-by-event analysis of data
• Transverse momentum versus multiplicity fluctuations in high-energy nuclear collisions
• Two-particle correlations on transverse momentum and momentum dissipation in Au-Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 130 GeV
• Extracting Event Dynamics from Event-by-Event Analysis
• Understanding $K/\pi$ ratio distribution in the mixed events
• Angular pattern of minijet transverse energy flow in hadron and nuclear collisions