Characteristics of charged particle multiplicities distribution in relativistic heavy-ion interactions

Multiplicity and pseudorapidity distributions of shower particles produced in interactions of the ¹⁹⁷Au at 10.6A GeV, ²⁸Si at 14.5A GeV, ¹⁶O and ³²S at 200A GeV beams were studied in nuclear emulsion. The pseudorapidity (η) distributions are approximately Gaussian in shape. Their widths increase monotonically from central to peripheral collisions with energy and with the size of the target. The widths of the pseudorapidity distributions, the values of their centroid, pseudorapidity density and η_peak values are compared among the different groups of their multiplicity at different energies as a function of centrality for all four beams. © 1996 The American Physical Society.