Cumulant to Factorial Moment Ratio and Multiplicity Data

Abstract

The ratio of cumulant to factorial moments of experimental multiplicity distributions has been calculated for $e^{+}e^{-}$ and $hh$ interactions in a wide range of energies. As a function of the rank it exhibits an initial steep decrease and a series of oscillations around zero. Those features cannot be reproduced by the Negative Binomial Distribution. A comparable behaviour is instead predicted in high-energy perturbative QCD. The presence of a qualitatively similar behaviour for different processes and in wide energy intervals suggests speaking of an approximate scaling of the cumulant to factorial moment ratio.