Multiplicity fluctuations due to the temperature fluctuations in high-energy nuclear collisions

We investigate the multiplicity fluctuations observed in high-energy nuclear collisions attributing them to intrinsic fluctuations of temperature of the hadronizing system formed in such processes. To account for these fluctuations, we replace the usual Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) statistics by the nonextensive Tsallis statistics characterized by the nonextensivity parameter q, with |q-1| being a direct measure of fluctuation. In the limit of vanishing fluctuations, q→1 and Tsallis statistics converge to the usual BG. We evaluate the nonextensivity parameter q and its dependence on the hadronizing system size from the experimentally observed collision centrality dependence of the mean multiplicity <N> and its variance Var(N). We attribute the observed system size dependence of q to the finiteness of the hadronizing source, with q=1 corresponding to an infinite, thermalized source with a fixed temperature, and with q>1 (which is observed) corresponding to a finite source in which both the temperature and energy fluctuate.