Large proton cumulants from the superposition of ordinary multiplicity distributions

Abstract

We construct a multiplicity distribution characterized by large factorial cumulants (integrated correlation functions) from a simple combination of two ordinary multiplicity distributions characterized by small factorial cumulants. We find that such a model, which could be interpreted as representing two event classes, reproduces the preliminary data for the proton cumulants measured by the STAR collaboration at $7.7$ GeV very well. This model then predicts very large values for the fifth and sixth order factorial cumulants, which can be tested in experiment.

Comments: 15 pages, 4 figures; comments and addendum (2 pages) added