Entropy and Multifractality in Relativistic Ion-Ion Collisions

Abstract

Entropy production in multiparticle systems is investigated by analyzing the experimental data on ion-ion collisions at AGS and SPS energies and comparing the findings with those reported earlier for hadron-hadron, hadron-nucleus, and nucleus-nucleus collisions. It is observed that the entropy produced in limited and full phase space, when normalized to maximum rapidity, exhibits a kind of scaling which is nicely supported by Monte Carlo model HIJING. Using Rényi’s order q information entropy, multifractal characteristics of particle production are examined in terms of generalized dimensions, Dq. Nearly the same values of multifractal specific heat, c, observed in hadronic and ion-ion collisions over a wide range of incident energies suggest that the quantity c might be used as a universal characteristic of multiparticle production in hadron-hadron, hadron-nucleus, and nucleus-nucleus collisions. The analysis is extended to the study of spectrum of scaling indices. The findings reveal that Rényi’s order q information entropy could be another way to investigate the fluctuations in multiplicity distributions in terms of spectral function f(α), which has been argued to be a convenient function for comparison sake not only among different experiments but also between the data and theoretical models.