Isospin Violation and Possible Signatures of Disoriented Chiral Condensates in Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

It is possible that isospin violating dynamical effects are amplified due to coherence if a disoriented chiral condensate (or other source of a coherent pion state) is formed in a heavy ion collison. It is shown explicitly that altering the isospin of the coherent state by order of one unit can change the number of $\pi^0$'s in the condensate by some finite fraction of the total number. A possible signature of such amplified isospin violating effects is that the ratio of neutral to total low $p_T$ pions averaged over many events may differ markedly from 1/3. Such a signal would not be washed out if multiple domains of coherent pions form.