Impact of momentum resolution on factorial moments due to power-law correlations between particles

TL;DR

This paper investigates how finite momentum resolution impacts factorial moments derived from power-law correlated particles, revealing significant effects that influence the search for the critical point in heavy-ion collision experiments.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the influence of momentum resolution on factorial moments in the context of power-law correlations, relevant for critical point searches.

Findings

Factorial moments are significantly affected by finite momentum resolution.

The impact depends on the correlation function's power and the number of uncorrelated particles.

Finite resolution effects can be larger than initially expected.

Abstract

The effect of momentum resolution on factorial moments due to the power-law correlation function is studied. The study is motivated by the search for the critical point of the strongly interacting matter in heavy-ion collisions using the intermittency method. We observe that factorial moments are significantly affected by the finite momentum resolution. The effect is superficially significant compared to intuitive expectations. The results depend on the power of the correlation function and the number of uncorrelated particles.