Effect of fluctuations on global analysis of fluid dynamical calculations for high-energy nuclear collisions

Recent experimental developments promise to give us a better insight into the dynamics of high-energy nuclear collisions. A major objective of those efforts is to determine whether collective-flow effects can be identified and distinguished from expectations based on intranuclear cascade calculations. However, one expects, and recent studies confirm, that the formation of composite fragments, the finiteness of the multiplicity, and the statistical fluctuations in the final states affect the event analysis in important ways. In the present work the authors wish to elucidate this situation by analyzing events generated theoretically using fluid-dynamical results in conjunction with the statistical simulation model by Fai and Randrup. They compare the fluid-dynamical and statistically generated flow diagrams (flow angle THETA versus aspect ratio R/sub 1/3/) in the collision 93Nb + 93Nb at 400 MeV/nucleon