On the Distribution of Neutral and Charged Pions through the Production of a Classical Pion Field

Abstract

High energy reactions may produce a state around the collision point that is best described by a classical pion field. Such a field might be an isospin rotated vacuum of the chiral $\sigma$-model or, as discussed in this work, a solution of the equations of motion resultinng from the coupling of fields of this model to quarks produced in the collision. In such configurations all directions in isospin space are allowed leading to a sizable probability of events with, essentially, only charged particles (Centauros) or all neutral particles (anti-Centauros). (In more common statistical models of multiparticle production, the probability of such events is suppressed exponentially by the total multiplicity.) We find that the isospin violation due to the mass difference of the up and down quarks has a significant effect on these distributions and enhances the production of events consisting predominantly of neutral particles.