Two-particle rapidity correlations in C+Ta interactions at 4.2A GeV/c.

Abstract

Two-particle rapidity correlations for pp, p${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\pi}}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}$, and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\pi}}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}$${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\pi}}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}$ pairs in C+Ta interactions at 4.2 GeV/c per nucleon are presented. The experimental data are obtained with a 2 m propane bubble chamber exposed on the JINR, Dubna, synchrophasotron. It is found that the strength of the correlations does not depend on particle combination, but strongly depends on the rapidity and collision centrality. The quark-gluon-string model describes these features of the correlations well, but needs to be tuned in the target fragmentation region. Since the quark-gluon-string model simulates the nucleus-nucleus collisions by the superposition of hadron-hadron collisions, we conclude that there is no evidence of a collective behavior in our data. This conclusion is additionally supported by the intermittency analysis. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.