Information Theory and Multiparticle Production

Abstract

The secondary particles produced in high-energy inelastic collisions are treated statistically but in a manner distinct from the concept of one or more fireballs. We employ the classical grand-canonical approach, and in the spirit of information theory define an entropy for the system. It is postulated that this entropy is independent of the energy of the system for a sufficiently high incoming energy. Consequently, the energy dependence of the charged multiplicity $N$ of the secondaries is determined to be $N\ensuremath{\sim}{(\frac{{E}_{0}}{\ensuremath{\mu}})}^{\frac{2}{3}}$, where ${E}_{0}$ is the incoming center-of-mass energy and $\ensuremath{\mu}$ a normalizing mass. Under additional but natural assumptions, the ratios ${N}_{{\ensuremath{\pi}}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}}{N}_{{K}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}}{N}_{p\overline{p}}$ are predicted. Comparison of our results is made with experiment, and some limitations and consequences of the method are discussed.