Cluster Production with Coalescence and Breakup

Abstract

The problem of hadronic cluster production in quark-hadron phase transition in heavy-ion collisions is studied by cellular automata. Previous result on the scaling behavior is extended to include variation in the drift speed. It is also shown that coalescence is more important than growth in generating scaling. A new set of rules is adopted to free the clusters from being rigid. It is found that the scaling exponent is independent of not only the shapes of the clusters, but also the probability of breakup of the clusters. The universality of the scaling behavior is now extended to a wide range of physical properties characterizing the geometry and dynamics of the phase transition process.