Void Analysis of Hadronic Density Fluctuations at Phase Transition

The event-to-event fluctuations of hadron multiplicities are studied for a quark system undergoing second-order phase transition to hadrons. Emphasis is placed on the search for an observable signature that is realistic for heavy-ion collisions. It is suggested that in the 2-dimensional y-phi space the produced particles selected in a very narrow p_T window may exhibit clustering patterns even when integrated over the entire emission time. Using the Ising model to simulate the critical phenomenon and taking into account a p_T distribution that depends on the emission time, we study in the framework of the void analysis proposed earlier and find scaling behavior. The scaling exponents turn out to be larger than the ones found before for pure configurations without mixing. The signature is robust in that it is insensitive to the precise scheme of simulating time evolution. Thus it should reveal whether or not the dense matter created in heavy-ion collisions is a quark-gluon plasma before hadronization.