Limiting fragmentation in heavy-ion collisions and percolation of strings

Abstract

The observed limiting fragmentation of charged particle distributions in heavy ion collisions is difficult to explain as it does not apply to the proton spectrum itself. On the other hand, string percolation provides a mechanism to regenerate fast particles, eventually compensating the rapidity shift (energy loss) of the nucleons. However a delicate energy-momentum compensation is required, and in our framework we see no reason for limiting fragmentation to be exact. A prediction, based on percolation arguments, is given for the charged particle density in the full rapidity interval at LHC energy $(\sqrt s =5500 GeV)$.