Signatures of Disoriented Chiral Condensates from Charged Pions

Abstract

We show that the variance in the number of charged pions (in a suitable range of momentum space) provides a signature for the observation of a disoriented chiral condensate (D$\chi$C). The signal should be observable even if multiple domains of D$\chi$C form provided the average number of pions per domain is significantly large than unity. The variance of the number charged pions alone provides a signal which can be used even if the number of neutral pions cannot be measured in a given detector. If the neutrals can be measured, however, the fluctuations in the total number of pions provides a signature which distinguishes disoriented chiral condensates from other hypothetical sources of coherent states of pions.