MULTIPLICITY DISTRIBUTIONS FROM CENTRAL COLLISIONS OF O-16+CU AT 14.6A GEV C AND INTERMITTENCY/

The E-802 Collaboration at the BNL-AGS has measured charged particle m ultiplicity distributions from central (ZCAL) collisions of O-16+Cu at 14.6A GeV/c as a function of the pseudorapidity interval delta eta gr eater than or equal to 0.1 in the range 1.2 less than or equal to eta less than or equal to 2.2. The fluctuations of these distributions as a function of the pseudorapidity interval have been studied by the met hod of normalized factorial moments and also by directly fitting the m easurements to negative binomial distributions (NBD). Excellent fits t o NBD were obtained in all delta eta bins, allowing, for the first tim e, a systematic formulation of the subject of intermittency in terms o f distributions to complement the description based on normalized fact orial moments. In agreement with all previous measurements of NBD fits to multiplicity distributions in hadron and lepton reactions, the k p arameter of the NBD fit for central O-16+Cu collisions is found to exh ibit an apparently linear increase with the Sg interval, albeit with a much steeper slope than for other reactions, and a nonzero intercept, k(0)not equal 0. The evolution of the NBD parameter k(delta eta) is u sed to determine the two-particle short-range rapidity correlation len gth for central O-16+Cu collisions, xi=0.18+/-0.05, which is much shor ter than the value xi similar to 1-3 for hadron collisions, but this i s a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference. These results l ead to a simple and elegant explanation of the intermittency formalism , without resort to fractals, for all reactions, which demystifies int ermittency-for O-16+Cu central collisions, intermittency is nothing mo re than the apparent statistical independence of the multiplicity in s mall pseudorapidity bins, delta eta similar to 0.2, due to the surpris ingly short two-particle rapidity correlation length.