Autocorrelations from fluctuation scale dependence by inversion

Abstract

Fluctuations in nuclear collisions can be measured as a function of momentum-space binning scale over a scale interval bounded by detector two-track resolution and acceptance. Fluctuation scale dependence is related to two-particle correlations by a Fredholm integral equation. That equation can be inverted by standard numerical methods to yield an autocorrelation distribution on difference variables as a projection of the full two-particle distribution which retains most of the correlation information in a more compact form. Autocorrelation distributions are typically more easily interpreted in terms of physical mechanisms than fluctuation measurements.