Chaotic sources and percolation of strings in heavy ion collisions

Abstract

The chaoticity parameter $\lambda$ of Bose–Einstein correlations is studied as a tool for analyzing the interaction between color strings in multiparticle production at high energies. Different scenarios of this interaction lead to a different behavior of $\lambda$ with energy and atomic number of the participants. Comparison to the present experimental data favors the percolation of strings scenario. The one of its versions in which $\lambda$ shows a peculiar dependence on the string density, very similar to the dependence of the fractional average cluster size, looks particularly attractive.