Multiplicity Distributions in High-Energy Collisions, and the Statistics of the Ideal Relativistic Bose Gas

Abstract

Utilizing some assumptions about high-energy collisions that underlie thermodynamic and hydrodynamic models of high-energy particle production, we find simple relationships among the moments of the multiplicity distribution $〈N^q〉$ that are reasonably well satisfied by recent data from the National Accelerator Laboratory (NAL) on ${\pi }^{-}$ production. Using $〈N_{\mathrm{ch}}〉=2\mathrm{}{E_{\mathrm{lab}}}^{\frac{1}{4}}$ we obtain a reasonable one-parameter fit to all the NAL multiplicity data except $f_2$ and $f_3$ at 100, 200, and 300 GeV.