Enhanced Signatures for Disoriented Chiral Condensates

Abstract

The probability distribution in $R$, the proportion of neutral pions to all pions emitted in heavy ion collisions in certain kinematic regions, has been suggested as a signal of a disoriented chiral condensate (D$χ$C). Here we note that the signature can be greatly enhanced by making suitable cuts in the data. In particular, we consider reducing the data set such that the $k$ pions with lowest $p_T$ are all neutral. We find that, given such cuts, $<R >$ can be substantially different from 1/3. For example, for a single D$χ$C domain without contamination due to incoherently emitted pions, $<R>$ is 3/5 given the pion with lowest $p_T$ is neutral, and 5/7 given the two pions with lowest $p_T$ are both neutral, etc.. The effects of multi-domain D$χ$C formation and noise due to incoherent pion emission can be systematically incorporated. Potential applications to experiments and their limitations are briefly discussed.