Nonextensive Description of Charged-Particle Production in Ultrarelativistic Collisions

TL;DR

This paper explores how charged particles are produced in high-energy collisions using a model that accounts for quantum chromodynamics and non-equilibrium states.

Contribution

The study introduces a nonextensive framework for particle production that incorporates stochastic QCD effects and heavy-tailed distributions.

Findings

Heavy-tailed distributions are necessary to reproduce the observed power-law tails in particle spectra.

Nonextensive models explain KNO scale invariance and particle production in out-of-equilibrium states.

ALICE data trends align with enhanced hard-particle production in small systems and suppression in heavy-ion collisions.

Abstract

We study the production of charged particles in ultrarelativistic collisions by using the string fragmentation model. To do this, we describe the pT spectrum as the convolution of the Schwinger mechanism with string tension fluctuations that account for the stochastic nature of QCD. We found that heavy-tailed distributions are required to adequately reproduce the power-law tail of the pT spectrum experimentally observed. Additionally, the heavy-tailed characteristic is also necessary for the KNO scale invariance of intense color interactions modeling hard processes in this framework. In this way, the initial state admits a nonextensive picture, leading to a final state out of equilibrium, in which particle production occurs in small regions at different temperatures. Applying this framework to ALICE data, we observe trends in the power-law exponent as a function of event multiplicity and collision centrality. These trends are consistent with enhanced hard-particle production in small systems and with high-pT-particle suppression in heavy-ion collisions.

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