On the Phase Space Partition in High Energy Collisions

Abstract

In high energy hadron-hadron and e+e- collisions, to isolate a part of the phase space in multi-hadron final states is necessary for exploring the underlying dynamics. It is shown that the partition of phase space according to the value of rapidity, popularly used in hadron-hadron collisions, is inappropriate for the study of e+e- collisions. The proper way in the latter case is to identify the visible jets and take them as objects for detailed study, forming an extended phase space. The value y_cut^(0) of the distance-measure for the identification of visible jets is determined. A new variable $r$ is introduced to further partition the phase space inside jets, which possesses a very good anomalous scaling property, showing that the $r$-distribution inside jets is a self-similar fractal.