Fluctuation of voids in hadronization at phase transition - art. no. 054902

Starting from the recognition that hadrons are not produced smoothly at pha se transition, the fluctuation of spatial patterns is investigated by findi ng a measure of the voids that exhibits scaling behavior. The Ising model i s used to simulate a crossover in quark-hadron phase transition. A threshol d in hadron density is used to define a void. The dependence of the scaling exponents on that threshold is found to provide useful information on some properties of the hadronization process. The complication in heavy-ion col lision introduces the possibility of configuration mixing, which can also b e studied in this approach. Numerical criteria on the scaling exponents hav e been found that can be used to discriminate phase-transition processes fr om other hadronization processes having nothing to do with critical phenome na.