A study of fluctuations of voids in relativistic ion–ion collisions

Abstract

Event-by-event (ebe) fluctuations of hadronic patterns are investigated in terms of voids by analyzing the experimental data on 4.5, 14.5 and 60 A GeV/c 16 O - AgBr collisions. The findings are compared with the predictions of a multi-phase transport AMPT model. Dependence of voids on phase space bin width is examined in terms of two lowest moments of ebe fluctuations of voids, 〈Gq〉 and Sq. The findings reveal that scaling exponent estimated from the observed power-law behavior of the voids may be used to characterize the various properties of hadronic phase transition. The results also rule out occurrence of second-order quark–hadron phase transition at the projectile energies considered.