Density and Boundary Effects on Pion Distributions in Relativistic Heavy--Ion Collisions

Abstract

We compute the pion inclusive momentum distribution in a heavy-ion collision, assuming thermal equilibrium and accounting for boundary effects at the time of decoupling. We calculate the chemical potential corresponding to an average pion multiplicity in central collisions and explore the consequences of having the pion system produced close to the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation.