Chaotic Behavior of Particle Production in Branching Processes

Abstract

The notion of chaotic behavior is examined for particle production in branching processes. Two types of branching are considered: non-Abelian gauge interaction and an Abelian cascade model. Properties of the production processes are investigated by Monte Carlo stimulation. The ``temporal'' behavior is studied by following the fluctuations in the multiplicities of each generation as the branching evolves. The ``spatial'' behavior is described in terms of the fluctuations of the normalized factorial moments from event to event. The information dimension and a new entropy index are determined. When all the measures are taken together, they collectively give a strong suggestion that the QCD branching process is chaotic, while the Abelian cascade model is not.