Signal of unusual large fluctuations in 32S-Em interactions at SPS energies

Abstract

An investigation on the presence of large dynamical fluctuations was carried out in the pseudorapidity phase space (η-space) of relativistic charged particles produced in 32S-Em interactions at 200 AGeV/c by the method of scaled factorial moments, F q , in terms of the new scaled variable X(η) suggested by Bialas and Gazdzicki. The Nuclear emulsion technique was employed to collect the experimental data. We compared our experimental results with those obtained from simulated events by using Monte Carlo Code FRITIOF. The variation of ln F q with ln M in pseudorapidity (η) phase space revealed a power law behavior. The values of the slopes, α q , determined from the analyses of the F q moments are discussed. The generalized fractal dimensions, D q , determined from the above method are calculated and found to decrease with the order of the moments, q, indicating multifractality in multiparticle production. Also, the anomalous fractal dimension d q obtained was found to increase linearly with the order of moments, q suggesting a self-similar cascade mechanism. In order to check for the presence of the statistical fluctuations, we generated uncorrelated Monte Carlo events (MC-RAND) randomly in -space based on the assumption of independent emission of particles and compared the results with the experimental and FRITIOF data. The experimental data on intermittency were found to exhibit a remarkable proximity to the analogous data obtained from the FRITIOF code. However, the uncorrelated Monte Carlo events exhibited no such dependence on M, which indicates the absence of a statistical contribution in the experimental data. The flat behavior in the Monte Carlo events is expected for an independent emission of particles.