# Percolation approach to phase transitions in high energy nuclear collisions

## 

One of the main aims of the study of relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is to find signs of deconfined partonic matter, known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP), which is expected to form at large energy densities . Many calculations have been proposed in order to estimate the threshold for QGP formation; in particular the idea of using percolation techniques has been explored in the past  and has been more recently applied to the high energy data available today, namely the NA50 results on Pb–Pb collisions at the SPS collider , which reported observation of strong, anomalous suppression of the $`J/\psi `$ signal. The authors of  used the percolation approach to support the explanation of NA50 results in terms of QGP formation. In this paper we will apply this technique to the realistic case in which the nuclear matter is not uniformly distributed in the collision volume.

In the collision of two nuclei of relativistic energy, each nucleon is subject to several interactions; these interactions are often described after the additive parton model, by colour exchange between pairs of quarks (colour triplets) so that the collision results in a large number of “colour strings” stretched between pairs of partons, the pairs being distributed over the interaction volume. If we consider central collisions between identical nuclei, a cross section in the transverse plane will show in the above framework small discs (the cross section of the strings, indicating colour exchange taking place) scattered randomly over a larger circular area, representing the size of the colliding nuclei at zero impact parameter (see Figure 1). The number of strings in these models grows with the atomic number and with c.m. energy; the radius $`r_s`$ of the cross section of a string has been estimated in various ways  to be in the range $`0.20.3`$ fm; in this paper we use $`r_s=0.2`$ fm, and discuss the changes expected for larger values.

When two or more strings overlap even partially a larger structure is formed in which colour can flow (following other authors , we call such structures “clusters of fused strings”); clusters are shown shaded in Figure 1. When the distribution of strings in the plane is uniform, the system is a typical example of the well studied problem of continuum percolation in two dimensions : discs of a fixed radius $`r_s`$ are randomly scattered in a plane following a uniform distribution. Overlapping discs form clusters of different sizes, but when the density of discs is large enough, an “infinite cluster” (a cluster that stretches to infinity in all directions) is formed with probability 1 and percolation is said to set in. The minimum density at which the infinite cluster is formed with probability 1 is known as “percolation threshold”: it corresponds to a phase transition whose critical exponents are well studied. It is convenient to introduce a dimensionless density $`\eta `$:

$$\eta =n\pi r_s^2$$
(1)   
where $`n`$ is the number of discs per unit area. The percolation threshold $`\eta _c`$ has been computed to be in the range 1.12–1.17 . Thus the probability of having an infinite cluster is simply

$$P_{\text{perc}}(\eta )=\theta (\eta \eta _c)$$
(2)   
Coming back to the physical problem, it must be noticed that there is no general agreement on the relationship between the density threshold for percolation and the threshold for QGP formation: it is widely believed that the latter cannot be smaller than the former, and seems accepted by most authors  that they are very close to each other. There is however one important point in which nucleus-nucleus collisions differ from the uniform percolation model: the distribution of strings in the transverse area is not uniform.

Indeed it is known that the nuclear matter is more dense near the centre of the nucleus than at the border, and in fact the density is usually parametrised in three dimensions with a Wood-Saxon distribution. It is then clear that the probability of two partons interacting is larger in the centre than at the border, and so is expected the density of strings: to be higher in the centre, decreasing towards the border. In the following, we explore how the percolation threshold changes when the distribution of discs is not uniform. The actual distribution could be approximated in several ways, making the problem very computation-intensive and model-dependent. We prefer instead to address the issue by comparing two limiting cases: the well known one of a uniform distribution, and that of a Gaussian distribution. The actual distribution is expected to lie between the two.

A computer simulation is performed in which a given number $`N`$ of discs (we treat in the following the terms ‘disc’ and ‘strings’ as synonyms) of radius $`r_s=0.2`$ fm is scattered over a circular surface of radius $`R(A)`$ where $`A`$ is the atomic number of the colliding nuclei, as given e.g. by the usual formula:

$$R(A)=1.14A^{1/3}$$
(3)   
(when the two nuclei are not identical, we still take the impact parameter to be zero, and the transverse area is then the transverse area of the smaller nucleus).

In the standard case of continuum percolation, the discs are uniformly distributed over the transverse area $`0rR(A)`$; the probability density in polar coordinates is given by:

$$U(r,\varphi )=\{\begin{array}{cc}1/\pi R^2(A)\hfill & \text{if}rR(A)\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise}\hfill \end{array}$$
(4)   
Of course, the dimensionless string density is given by: $`\eta =(r_s/R(A))^2N`$, $`N`$ being the number of strings.

Because we are dealing with a finite size system, we have to approximate the usual percolation parameters with finite size quantities. The usual parameter is the probability $`P_{\mathrm{}}(\eta )`$ for a disc to be part of the infinite cluster, which behaves near the threshold as a power law:

$$P_{\mathrm{}}(\eta )(\eta \eta _c)^\beta \theta (\eta \eta _c)\text{for}\eta \eta _c$$
(5)   
where $`\beta `$ is the well known critical exponent . Convenient parameters which approximate this behaviour are related to the size of the largest cluster, for example $`S_{\text{max}}`$, the area occupied by it, . It is clear that this parameter is monotonically increasing, but its increase below and above percolation threshold is much slower than in the vicinity of $`\eta _c`$, where it grows very rapidly. Figure 2 (dashed line) shows exactly this behaviour as obtained in our simulation. Another simple definition of percolation, useful in the case of a finite size system, is based on the diameter of a cluster, defined as the largest of all distances between pairs of connected strings (see e.g. the thick black lines drawn in the clusters of Figure 1) . When, in a particular simulation, there exists a cluster whose diameter is comparable to the diameter of the available area, $`2R(A)`$ in our case, we say that percolation “occurs”. A good statistics is then the probability $`f_{\text{perc}}(\eta )`$, the fraction of events at given $`\eta `$ in which percolation occurs. Its behaviour will approximate that of the probability of percolation $`P_{\text{perc}}(\eta )`$, turning the Heavyside function of eq. (2) into a sigmoid function because of the finite size of the system. Figure 3 (open squares) shows the results of our simulation for the uniform distribution. We can fit our points very well with $`\eta _c=1.12`$.

Let us now turn to the second interesting case: the strings are distributed according to a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution in the plane $`r<\mathrm{}`$:

$$G(r,\varphi )=\frac{1}{2\pi \sigma ^2}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{r^2}{2\sigma ^2}\right]$$
(6)   
where we choose $`\sigma =R(A)/\sqrt{2}`$, so that the root-mean-square radius equals the nuclear radius $`R(A)`$ and we can compare the results with those of the uniform distribution, eq. (4). Because the density is higher in the centre and lower away from it, we expect the percolation threshold in this case to be larger than for the uniform distribution case. Indeed in Figure 2 we also show $`S_{\text{max}}`$ for the Gaussian case (solid line): while a precise determination of a threshold for percolation in the Gaussian case is beyond the purpose of this paper, it is nonetheless quite clear that this threshold lies above the one for the uniform case. Notice that this result is clearly confirmed by examining the variation of the fraction of percolating events $`f_{\text{perc}}(\eta )`$ in Figure 3: from fitting this simulation we estimate $`\eta _c1.5`$ for the Gaussian case.

We apply now our results to nucleus-nucleus collisions. In Figure 4 we show the dimensionless density for Pb-Pb and S-U collisions as a function of the number of strings created in the event. Also shown are the percolation thresholds for the uniform and Gaussian case. Even when the percolation threshold is identified with the QGP formation threshold, one cannot conclude that present day experiments have reached QGP. This is in agreement with the results of a phenomenological approach to rare events (like $`J/\psi `$ production) based on scaling laws from the minimum bias distribution . It should on the other hand be expected that the threshold for percolation is reached at RHIC for Pb-Pb collisions, but it will probably need the LHC for the lighter S-U collisions.

It must be said that Figure 4 has been drawn with the parameters of  for the radii ($`r_s=0.2`$ fm, $`R(\text{Pb})=6.2`$ fm, $`R(\text{S})=3.35`$ fm). However the slopes in the Figure are very sensitive to the choice of string radius. A situation in which at present energy the Pb-Pb collisions are above and S-U below percolation threshold can arise for $`r_s=0.23`$ fm. A larger choice, like the one proposed in , $`r_s=0.26`$, fm will put S-U collisions slightly above percolation threshold already at the SPS collider.

## Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by project PRAXIS/PCEX/P/FIS/124/96. R. Ugoccioni would like to acknowledge the financial support of the “Sub-Programa Ci ncia e Tecnologia do $`2^o`$ Quadro Comunit rio de Apoio.”

## References