The Tsallis Distribution and Transverse Momentum Distributions in High-Energy Physics

TL;DR

This paper examines the use of the Tsallis distribution to fit transverse momentum data in high-energy physics, clarifies theoretical issues, and proposes an improved model with parameter estimates.

Contribution

It provides a thermodynamically consistent form of the Tsallis distribution for high-energy particle transverse momentum spectra.

Findings

Improved Tsallis distribution form for better data fitting

Parameter estimates for q and T in high-energy collisions

Clarification of thermodynamic consistency issues

Abstract

The Tsallis distribution has been used recently to fit the transverse momentum distributions of identified particles by the STAR collaboration \cite{Abelev:2006cs} at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and by the ALICE \cite{Aamodt:2011zj} and CMS \cite{Khachatryan:2011tm} collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider. Theoretical issues are clarified concerning the thermodynamic consistency of the Tsallis distribution in the particular case of relativistic high energy quantum distributions. An improved form is proposed for describing the transverse momentum distribution and fits are presented together with estimates of the parameter $q$ and the temperature $T$.