SPATIOTEMPORAL INTERMITTENCY IN ULTRARELATIVISTIC NUCLEAR COLLISIONS

The effect of nonstatistical fluctuations in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions is analyzed. We argue that it is a nonlinear effect, which cannot be accounted for by the simple nucleon-nucleon superposition models and may have strong implication on our understanding of the collision dynamics. The presence of spatiotemporal intermittency in the interaction region could explain the essential features of the experimentally observed intermittency patterns (impact parameter and projectile dependence). Assuming that the onset of the spatiotemporal intermittency is due to a higher-order phase transition, detailed calculations are made with the inclusion of the nonideal, inside-outside dynamics and the resonance decay. Also the behavior of the fluctuations during the hydrodynamical evolution is studied. The implication of the fractal structures in space-time for Bose-Einstein (BE) correlations is shown to be very small.