Power laws in elementary and heavy-ion collisions - A story of fluctuations and nonextensivity?

TL;DR

This paper reviews how power-law distributions in elementary and heavy-ion collisions can be explained by intrinsic fluctuations, using nonextensive statistics and the Tsallis entropy parameter q.

Contribution

It proposes that the observed power-law behaviors are a reflection of intrinsic fluctuations modeled through nonextensive statistics with a single parameter q.

Findings

Power-law distributions are linked to intrinsic fluctuations in hadronic systems.

The nonextensive parameter q effectively characterizes the degree of fluctuations.

Fluctuations are fundamental to understanding particle collision distributions.

Abstract

We review from the point of view of nonextensive statistics the ubiquitous presence in elementary and heavy-ion collisions of power-law distributions. Special emphasis is placed on the conjecture that this is just a reflection of some intrinsic fluctuations existing in the hadronic systems considered. These systems summarily described by a single parameter q playing the role of a nonextensivity measure in the nonextensive statistical models based on Tsallis entropy.