Disoriented Chiral Condensates and Quantum Mechanical Isospin Correlation

Abstract

Classical considerations suggest that the probability distribution $P(R)$, where $R$ is the ratio of neutral pions to total pions emitted from a disoriented chiral condensate (which has been hypothesized to form in heavy ion reactions) is $R^{-1/2}/2$. Quantum mechanical isospin correlations between the condensate and the remainder of the system can alter this. Moments of the P(R) distribution can be expressed in terms of expectation values of $(I^2/N^2)^m$ where $I$ is the isospin carried by the condensate, $N$ is the number of pions emitted and m is an arbitrary integer. We find that the probability distribution is very similar to the classical distribution for $0.1 < R < 0.9$ unless the isospin carried by the condensate is very large.