Pion Fluctuation Study in Pb–Pb Collision at 2.76 TeV per Nucleon Pair from ALICE Experiment with Chaos and Complex Network-Based Methods

Abstract

Chaos and complex-network based study is performed to look for signature of phase transition in Pb–Pb collision data sample at 2.76 TeV per nucleon pair from ALICE Collaboration. The analysis is done on the pseudorapidity (η) values extracted from the data of the experiment and the methods used are Multifractal-Detrended-Fluctuation-Analysis (MF-DFA), and a rigorous chaos-based, complex-network based method—Visibility-Graph (VG) analysis. The fractal behavior of pionisation process is studied by utilizing MF-DFA method for extracting the Hurst exponent and Multifractal-spectrum-width to analyze the scale-freeness and fractality, inherent in the fluctuation pattern of η. Then VG method is used to analyze the fluctuation from a completely different perspective of complex network. This algorithm’s scale-freeness detection mechanism to extract the Power-of-Scale-freeness-of-Visibility-Graph (PSVG), re-establishes the scale-freeness and fractality. Earlier, it has been shown that the scaling behavior is different from one hadron–nucleus ( $${{\pi }^{ - }}$$ -AgBr (350 GeV)) to one nucleus–nucleus (32S-AgBr (200 A GeV)) interaction which is of comparatively higher total energy [1]. In this work, we have compared the fluctuation pattern in terms of $$3$$ rigorous parameters—Multifractal-spectrum-width, Hurst exponent and PSVG, between Pb–Pb (2.76 TeV per nucleon pair) data and either of $${{\pi }^{ - }}$$ -AgBr (350 GeV) or 32S-AgBr (200 A GeV) data, where both the interaction data are of significantly less energy. We found that the values of the 3 parameters are substantially different for ALICE data compared to the other two interaction data. As remarkably different value of long-range-correlation indicates phase-transition, similar change in the fluctuation pattern in terms of these parameters can be attributed to a phase-transition and also the onset of QGP.