Multiparticle Production in High-Energy Collisions

Abstract

The "incoherent-droplet" model proposed earlier is solved for the general case of multiparticle production in high-energy hadron collisions. For small transverse momenta the result is equivalent to taking the invariant square matrix element to be $C \exp [-(\frac{n}{Nk_0^{}{}_{}{}^2}\left)\Sigma \stackrel{n}{i=1\mathrm{}}q_i^{}{}_{}{}^2\right],$ where $q_i$ is the magnitude of the transverse momentum of the $i\mathrm{th}$ final particle, $n$ is the total number of particles in the final state, $N$ is an increasing function of energy, otherwise unspecified, and $k_0$ is a constant. Independent of the choice of parameters in the model, it is found that in the high-energy limit two of the heaviest final particles share equally almost all of the available energy. Parameters of the model can be so chosen as to reproduce the experimental constancy of the average transverse momentum and the total cross section. The simplest choice leads to the prediction that the average multiplicity increases logarithmically with the total c.m. energy. Illustrative examples of energy and angular distributions are given.