Indian J Phys DOI 10.

1007/s12648-012-0097-z

ORIGINAL PAPER

Event-by-event uctuations of particle ratios in heavy-ion collisions

A Tawk1,2*
1

Egyptian Center for Theoretical Physics (ECTP), MTI University, Cairo 11211, Egypt
2

Research Center for Einstein Physics, Freie-University Berlin, Berlin, Germany Received: 13 July 2010 / Accepted: 03 May 2012

Abstract: We have studied the event-by-event dynamical uctuations of some particle yield ratios at various incident energies. We have assumed that the particle production in the nal state is due to chemical equilibrium processes. We have compared the results from the hadron resonance gas (HRG) model with the available experimental data. At energies up to SPS, the HRG model can very well reproduce the experimentally measured uctuations. To reproduce RHIC results, the quark phase space occupancy parameter is allowed to vary. Furthermore, we have made predictions for the dynamical uctuations of strange and non-strange particle ratios. We have found that the overall energy-dependence is non-monotonic. We have also found that the uctuations strongly depend on the various species of particle ratios. Keywords: Fluctuation phenomena in statistical physics; Particle production (relativistic collisions); Quark connement; Statistical theories of nuclear reactions PACS Nos.: 05.40.-a; 25.75.Dw; 12.38.Aw

1. Introduction Understanding the dynamical properties of hot and dense matter is an essential key question in the heavy-ion collision experiments. The event-by-event uctuations have been suggested [14] to provide comprehensive characteristics of this matter. They are crucial observations to check the hypothesis of chemical equilibrium in the heavyion collisions [58]. So far, the event-by-event uctuations of very few particle ratio have been studied in several experiments at AGS, SPS and RHIC energies [913]. In the present work, we have studied the energy-dependence of the event-by-event uctuations in the hadron resonance gas model. The hypothetical phase transition to and from the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) can be characterized by large uctuations in the particle yields [14], which are apparently accompanied by volume uctuations. The latter can be eliminated, when the particle ratio are considered [3]. In this work, we have tried to give answers to the questions, whether the strange quarks are going to enhance the dynamical uctuations and whether the critical end-point can be localized by means of the dynamical uctuations.

*Corresponding author, E-mail: a.tawfik@eng.mti.edu.eg

Since the experimental measurements of the event-byevent uctuations are very much limited, we hope that our predictions encourage specifying certain particle ratio and measure their dynamical uctuations. Furthermore, we have made predictions for the dynamical and statistical uctuations of different particle ratio dependent on the collision energy. It is found that the strength of uctuations strongly depend on the particle ratio themselves. In some particle ratio, the dynamical uctuations are negative. In other particle ratio, the dynamical uctuations are slightly positive. The statistical uctuations are, as the name says, reecting the sampling properties and the statistical treatment of the system. Their physical meaning is minor. They usually are considered as the statistical contamination background and therefore have to be extracted. The dynamical uctuations are reecting essential physical processes, for example symmetry breaking, out-of-equilibrium processes. This is the reason, why this work is devoted to characterize them in concrete particle ratio. The ultimate goal of the event-by-event uctuation studies is to localize the abrupt and sudden change in the hadronic system and accordingly the phase transition to QGP. Such a phase transition is accompanied by symmetry breaking (or restoration) and various out-of-equilibrium processes. We have also found that the uctuations of hybrid and cascade

2012 IACS

A. Tawk

baryons are dominant. All these predictions are phenomenologically of great interest. The dynamical uctuations are calculated at xed temperature T, baryo-chemical potential lB and volume V at a p xed center-of-mass energy s. All these parameters are xed according to the condition s/T3 = 7 [1418], where s is the entropy density. The condition s/T3 = 7 [1418] perfectly characterizes the equilibrium chemical freeze-out p at all center-of-mass energies s. No impact parameter has been assigned to HRG, in order to decide about the collision centrality. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 is devoted to the HRG model. The dynamical uctuations of the hadrons are studied in Section 3. In Section 4, the dynamical uctuations of the quarks are discussed.

2. Model The pressure in the hadronic phase is given by the contributions from all hadron resonances, which are treated as a free gas [1922]. The resulting pressure accounts for free as well as for strong interactions between resonances. In the previous work [22], we have proved that the thermodynamics of a strongly interacting system consisting of hadron resonances can be approximated by an ideal gas of stable and resonance hadrons. This is one of the reasons why HRG model is the only model suitable to study the strong matter. As given in Refs [1922], HRG model perfectly reproduces the thermodynamics of lattice QCD calculations at vanishing and nite chemical potential. There is no other model, which combines simple conguration and powerful or almost perfect reproduction of lattice QCD calculations and heavy-ion collisions like HRG model. At nite temperature T, strange lS and isospin lI3 and baryo-chemical potential lB, the pressure of one hadron read Z1 h i ek g k2 dk ln 1 ckB kS kI3 e T ; pT; lB ; lS ; lI3 2 T 2p
0

potential for light quarks is lq = (lu ? ld)/2. lS is calculated as a function of T and lB under the condition of conservation of strange quarks [22]. Isospin chemical potential lI3 lu ld =2. Depending on c-factor1, the equilibrium value, c = 1 leads to a situation, where one could not distinguish between the different hadron species, i.e., all hadrons have the same quark phase occupancy factor, no matter which volume or mass or quark constituents they have. In this case, HRG is apparently able to predict various particle yield ratios at a wide range of incident energies. At the SPS energies, HRG at c = 1 provides a good description for the experimentally measured dynamical uctuations [12]. The particle number density is given by derivative of the partition function, Eq. (1), w.r.t. the chemical potential of interest. The uctuations in the particle number are given by the susceptibility density, which is the second derivative w.r.t. the chemical potential l. X gi Z eli ei =T hni dkk2 ; 2 2 2p 1 eli ei =T i X gi Z eei li =T dkk2 : 3 hDn2 i 2 2p2 eei li =T 1 i When the system absolved the chemical freeze-out process, the hadron resonances are conjectured to decay either to stable particles or to other resonances. The particle number and the uctuation densities in the nal state have to take into account this chemical process as follows. X hnfinal i hndirect i bj!i hnj i; 4 i i
j6i

hDnj!i 2 i bj!i 1 bj!i hnj i b2 hDnj 2 i; j!i

1 where ek k2 m2 1=2 is single-particle energy and stands for bosons and fermions, respectively. g is spin isospin degeneracy factor. c : cncm are quark phase space q s occupancy parameters, where n and m being number of light and strange quarks, respectively. In the present work, we explicitly use the equilibrium value for c, i.e., the unity. k expl=T is the fugacity factor, where l is chemical potential multiplied by corresponding charge. The quark chemistry is apparently given by relating hadronic chemical potentials to quark constituents. lB = 3lq and lS = lq - ls, where q and s being light and strange quark quantum number, respectively. The baryo-chemical

where bj!i being the branching ratio for the decay of j th resonance to i th particle. To characterize when the chemical freeze-out takes place, we assumed that ratio s/T3, where s is the entropy density, get a constant value. Details about this ratio and its physical meaning are given in Ref. [23]. The uctuation in the particle ratio n1/n2 is given by [3] r21 =n2 n hDn1 2 i hn1 i
2

hDn2 2 i hn2 i
2

hDn1 Dn2 i ; hn1 i hn2 i

which includes dynamical and statistical uctuations. The third term of Eq. (6) counts for the uctuations from the hadron resonances which decay into particle 1 and particle 2, simultaneously. In such a mixing channel, all correlations including quantum statistics ones are taken into
1

c differs with the hadron species. With c = const, we mean cq = cs = const. Even at this equal value, c is different for different hadron species. For example, cp = 1.22 9 1.20 and cK = 1.22 9 1.21.

Event-by-event uctuations of particle ratios Fig. 1 (a) The dynamical uctuations of K?/p? ratio as a p function of s (curve) are compared with the experimental results (symbols). Results from the SPS experiments [9] are drawn in open symbols. RHIC (STAR) results are given as solid symbols. (b) shows the dynamical uctuations of " p p=p p ratios

(a)
10

SPS

[%]

HRG STAR

(b)
+- )

2 0 -2 -4 -6 -8

HRG SPS STAR

[%]

8 6 4 2 10

100

dyn(p+anti-p)/(

dynK

+ + /

10

100

s [GeV]

s [GeV]

Fig. 2 The predictions for the dynamical uctuations of strange (a) and non-strange (b) particle ratio

(a) 60
50

(b)
/ + / + / / - K /
+ +

8 4

dyn

dyn

40 30 20 10 10

0 -4 -8

+/

p/ + n/ n/+ p/

100

10

100

s [GeV]

s [GeV]

account. Obviously, this decay channel results in strong correlated particles and therefore their uctuations are likely to increase. If this is the case, the overall dynamical uctuations become negative due to the negative sign in front of the last term in Eq. (6). To extract the statistical uctuations, we apply Poisson scaling in the mixed decay channels,2   1 1 7 r21 =n2 n stat hn1 i hn2 i Subtracting Eq. (7) from (Eq. 6), we get the dynamical uctuations of the particle ratio n1/n2.   hn2 i hn2 i hn1 i hn2 i 2hn1 n2 i : 8 r21 =n2 12 22 n dyn hn1 ihn2 i hn1 i hn2 i First two terms apparently reect the contributions from the single-particle channels of 1-st and 2-nd particle, respectively. The last term gives the contribution from the mixed channels and resonance decays. Therefore, it is likely to measure negative dynamical uctuations as well as positive ones.

3. Dynamical uctuations of the hadrons The experimental measurements of the dynamical uctuations of particle ratios are systematically confronted with theoretical predictions from HRG model in Fig. 1. There was an earlier attempt to compare with preliminary results for K/p reported in [3]. The HRG model is obviously able to reproduce all the experimentally measured uctuations. For K?/p? ratio, the experimental data covers a wide range of center of p mass energy s [1113], or collision energy. While for " p p=p p ratio, the experimental data available so far have been measured at SPS energies only. That the results from HRG model agree well with the existing experimental data, obviously allows us to make predictions for the dynamical uctuations of other particle ratio as is given in Fig. 2. On the other hand, we can now use the model to systematically investigate the dependence of p the event-by-event uctuations on s. Few comments about the global ndings of this work are in order at this moment. Dependence of the event-by-event uctuations of p particle ratios on s is non-monotonic. The dependence abruptly or suddenly changes its behavior from p one s-region to another. It is not always possible to describe the dependence by just one single continuous function. Apparently, there are regions in which the dependence is discontinuous.

Experimentally, there are various methods to construct statistical uctuations [12, 13]. Frequently used method is the one that measures the particle ratios from the mixing events.

A. Tawk

Fluctuations can be suppressed and/or enhanced at p different s. On one hand, this would refer to the previous comment. On the other hand, it reects the interrelation between the uctuations of single-particles and the ones of mixed resonance decay channels. There is no global tendency. Some uctuations decrease with other increase. Fluctuations in strange particles are positive and p enhanced with s. Non-strange uctuations are almost globally smaller than strange ones. With strange particles, we mean the hadron resonances which have strange quark constituents. The same is valid for anti-strange quark contents. There are remarkable minima at top SPS energies. These kinds of uctuations posses remarkable minima, positioned around top SPS energies. Non-strange uctuations are negative indicating a strong contribution from resonance decays especially at low energies. With non-strange uctuations, we mean the dynamical uctuation of particles, which do not have any strange quark constituent. They merely consist of up- and down-quarks. In general, the event-by-event uctuations at high p energy increase with the increasing of the s. There is only one exception from this empirical role: the K-/pratio. Its uctuations exponentially decrease with p increasing s, which might refer to the remarkable uctuations in particles consisting of strange quarks.

In Fig. 1a, we have compared the experimentally measured dynamical uctuations of K?/p? ratio with the results deduced from the HRG model. There is a good agreement at energies up to SPS and RHIC energies [12, 13, 24]. A previous study of the particle ratio, i.e., multiplicity, in heavy-ion collisions [25] obviously concluded that all thermal models including HRG with c = 1 slightly overestimate the particle ratio at RHIC energy. As given above, c refers to the quark phase space occupancy parameters. In order to reproduce the particle ratio, their multiplicities, precisely, one has to allow c to take values different from unity. Inserting large hni, the average particle number density, in Eq. (8) apparently would result in a little bit smaller dynamical uctuation r. " In Fig. 1b, the dynamical uctuations of p p=p p p ratio are depicted as a function of s. The agreement at energies up to SPS seems to be excellent. The predicp tions of the HRG model at higher s-energies are slightly below the STAR results [13, 24]. In order to reproduce the experimental results, we might allow c to have values different than unity, i.e., we allow non-equilibrium processes. We notice that the dynamical uctuations are negative. According to Eq. (8), negative values are to be understood as a reason of the dominant contribution from

the resonance decay channels. The mixed channels in this non-strange particle yield seem to play an essential role in this particle ratio. Our predictions for the freehanded dynamical uctuations of different particle ratio are depicted in Fig. 2. The uctuations of some strange particle ratio are given in Fig. 2(a). Figure 2(b) shows the uctuations of the nonstrange particle ratios. Depending on the species of the particles, some uctuations decrease while others increase p with increasing s. As discussed above, the energy dependence is apparently non-monotonic. It is not uniquely to be described by a continuous function. Some particle ratio have negative dynamical uctuations, while the uctuations of other particle ratio move from negative to positive values. The latter values are referring to the essential role of the resonance decays channels, while the earlier ones are referring to the dominant role of the singleparticle channels. We notice that the negative uctuations are explicitly obtained from non-strange particle ratio; here the dynamical uctuations of n/p-, p/p? and p?/p- ratio are everywhere and overall negative. In these particle yields, the dynamical uctuations stemming from the resonance decay channels are apparently much greater than the dynamical ones from single-particle channels. The uctuations of p/p- and n/p? ratio have a remarkable depenp p dence on s. At low s, i.e., at AGS and SPS energies, p they are negative. Within a relatively short s interval, their values switch to the positive sign. At higher energies, p they monotonically raise with the increasing of s. Furthermore, we notice that the values of the dynamical uctuations from the strange particle yield ratio are apparently greater than that of ones of the nonstrange p particle yield ratio. Their dependence on s is also nonmonotonic. While the dynamical uctuations of K-/pp ratio exponentially decrease with the increasing of s, the dynamical uctuations of the K=p and N =p ratios have p minimum values at s $ 17 GeV. This is an essential nding out of this work.

4. Dynamical uctuations of the quarks Comparing strange uctuations with non-strange uctuations, we nd that replacing pionmesons by their antiparticle has almost no inuence on the strange dynamical uctuations [26]. The non-strange dynamical uctuations are dramatically changed, when pionmesons in the denominator3 has been replaced by their anti-particle. For
3

Assuming that particle ratios can mathematically be seen as continuous and dened fraction of the quark constituents and their d.o.f.

Event-by-event uctuations of particle ratios

instance, the quark constituents for the p/p ratio, where we " could assume p=p  u u d=u; d u d d, would lead to D D E D E 2 E Dnp=p ! Dnu 2 2 Dnd 2 9 D E D E 2 ! 3 Dnu 2 : 10 Dnp=p These expressions seem to give approximate estimations for the quark dynamical uctuations related to the hadronic ones. As in the right panel in Fig. 2, while the uctuations of the rst ratio move from negative to positive values, the p second ratio remains negative at all senergies. In the hadronic phase, i.e., while considering particle (hadron yield) ratios, the quarks are strongly conned into the hadronic states. It is believed that the quarks in the unconned phase (QGP) may be strongly correlated [25], even at temperatures above the critical one. Since the RHICs discovery of 2003 about the new state of matter, we believe that QGP is likely a strongly correlated matter. It would be interesting to verify above expressions. In doing this, we have to take into consideration the volume uctuations on lattice. One essential constrain here, is that the HRG model can not be applied at temperatures higher than critical one. We nd that the values of the dynamical uctuations depend on the particle yields. According to QCD, the hadronic matter under extreme conditions of high temperature T and pressure p is conjectured to have dynamical transitions into partonic matter (QGP). Assuming that we put certain particle ratio under these conditions, we want to see the change in its dynamical uctuation before and after the phase transition. This is equivalent to our numerical study, which we performed at various incident energies p ( s). We start with hadronic matter of two particles and end up with partonic mater (Eqs. 9 and 10). The uctuations of the quark number have been studied in the lattice QCD [26]. It has been found that the Tp dependence (equivalent to s-dependence) of the uctuations is dominated by the analytic part of the partition function. Across the critical temperature, Tc, there is a smooth increase of the uctuations with increasing T. For our analysis, Tc is not exactly specied. Our results on the uctuations of individual particle are not shown here. Nevertheless, we can make the following statements: We nd that the uctuations of mesons (individual particles) have almost the same structure as the lattice uctuations and that the baryons have maximum value at p s % 17 GeV. At higher energies, the baryon uctuations decrease. The quantitative comparison with the lattice is, of course, not possible. As discussed in previous section, the thermodynamics in the hadronic phase can be reproduced when taking into account many stable and resonance

hadrons in the partition function. A free gas of one hadron is not able to reproduce the quantitative thermodynamics below Tc.

5. Conclusions and outlook In the present work, we assume that the particle production is due to chemical equilibrium processes in the nal state, i.e., c = 1. That our models can very well reproduce the experimental measurements means that the equilibrium freeze out scenario is apparently proved, especially at the SPS energies. At RHIC, precise measurements are needed. p Energy scan down to s 17 GeV turns to be a crucial step to verify the worthwhile behavior of particle production [23, 27, 28] and now dynamical uctuations. The dependence of the strange uctuations on the energy is also non-monotonic. For K?/p? ratios, the uctuations have a negative dependence on energy around the p SPS energies. There is a minimum around s % 20 GeV. At higher energies, the uctuations smoothly increase. The uctuations of K=p and N =p ratios have also minimal p values at s $ 17 GeV K-/p- ratio has a completely different behavior. The dynamical uctuations of this particle p ratio exponentially decrease with s. We nd that the event-by-event dynamical uctuations depend on the particle species and their ratios. There is a rapid increase at low energy. At high energies, the dynamical uctuations smoothly increase. Also, there is a remarkable sharp increase in p/p- and n/p?uctuations within a very short range of energies. The values of energies are different. We have shown that the baryon to meson uctuations are much larger than the meson to meson ones. The uctuations from single-hybrid and single-cascade baryons are much larger than their resonance decay channels. According to our results, we now have a framework to study the uctuations of the particle ratios, systematically. As mentioned above, the uctuations of the particle ratios effectively eliminates the volume uctuations. It is worthwhile to mention here that the latter are still included in lattice QCD simulations. According to this systematic study, it was not possible to point out certain energy or region of energy, at which dynamical uctuations sharply increase. The speculations on manifestation of critical endpoint by a rapidly increase of the dynamical uctuations of particle ratios can not be veried by this model. Furthermore, the region of unconned phase can not be specied, precisely. It would be interesting to extract information about the role of different decay channel in the energy-dependence of the dynamical uctuations.

A. Tawk Acknowledgments This study is partly supported by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and by the GermanEgyptian Scientic Projects (GESP ID: 1378). [13] B I Abelev et al. [STAR collaboration] Phys. Rev. Lett. 103 092301 (2009) [14] A Tawk Nucl. Phys. A 764 387 (2006) [15] A Tawk Fizika B 18 141 (2009) [16] A Tawk Prog. Theor. Phys. 126 279292 (2011) [17] A Tawk Nucl. Phys. A 859 63 (2011) [18] A Tawk Europhys. Lett. 75 420 (2006). arXiv:hep-ph/0410392 [19] F Karsch, K Redlich and A Tawk Eur. Phys. J. C 29 549 (2003) [20] F Karsch, K Redlich and A Tawk Phys. Lett. B 571 67 (2003) [21] K Redlich, F Karsch and A Tawk J. Phys. G 30 S1271 (2004) [22] A Tawk Phys. Rev. D 71 054502 (2005) [23] A Tawk J. Phys. G 31 S1105 (2005) [24] T J Tarnowsky [STAR collaboration], talk given at the 26th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, 29 Jan 2010, arXiv:1005.1895 [nucl-ex] [25] A Tawk, Talk given at YKIS Seminar on New Frontiers in QCD: Exotic Hadrons and Hadronic Matter, Kyoto, 20 Nov8 Dec 2006, arXiv:hep-ph/0604037 [26] S Ejiri, F Karsch and K Redlich Phys. Lett. B 633 275 (2006) [27] A Tawk Phys. Lett. B 623 48 (2005) [28] A Tawk Indian J. Phys. 85 755 (2011)

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