In this paper intermittent behaviour of the pions from ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ classes of events from¹²C-AgBr interactions at 4.5 A GeV has been studied, separately. The results reveal strong intermittent pattern in case of ‘cold’ class of events.

A self-affne analysis of charged-particle multiplicity distribution (protons + pions) in $\pi^{−}$ –AgBr interaction at 350 GeV/c is performed according to the two-dimensional factorial moment methodology using the concept of Hurst exponent in $X_{\cos \theta^{-}} $X_{\phi}$ phase space. Comparing with the results obtained from self-similar analysis, the self affine analysis shows a better power-law behaviour. Corresponding results are compared with shower multiplicity distribution (pions). Multifractal behaviour is observed for both types of distributions.

We compute the factorial correlators to study the dynamical fluctuations of pions and a combination of pions and protons (compound multiplicity) in ³²S–AgBr interactions at 200 A GeV. The study reveals that for both pion and compound multiplicity the correlated moments increase with the decrease in bin–bin separation 𝐷, following a power-law, which suggests the self-similarity of multiplicity fluctuation in each case. The results of the analysis also show a consistency with the prediction of 𝛼-model for the existence of intermittency in both cases.

The multiplicity fluctuations of the produced pions were studied using scaled variance method in ¹⁶O–AgBr interactions at 2.1 AGeV, ²⁴Mg–AgBr interactions at 4.5 AGeV, ¹²C–AgBr interactions at 4.5 AGeV, ¹⁶O–AgBr interactions at 60 AGeV and ³²S–AgBr interactions at 200 AGeV at two different binning conditions. In the first binning condition, the rapidity interval was varied in steps of one centring about the central rapidity until it reached 14. In the second case, the rapidity interval was increased in steps of 1.6 up to 14.4. Multiplicity distributions and their scaled variances were presented as a function of the dependence on the rapidity width for both the binning conditions. Multiplicity fluctuations were found to increase with the increase of rapidity interval and later found to saturate at larger rapidity window for all the interactions and in both the binning conditions. Multiplicity fluctuations were found to increase with the energy of the projectile beam. The values of the scaled variances were found to be greater than one in all the cases in both the binning conditions indicating the presence of correlation during the multiparticle production process in high-energy nucleus–nucleus interactions. Experimental results were compared with the results obtained from the Monte Carlo simulated events for all the interactions. The Monte Carlo simulated data showed very small values of scaled variance suggesting very small fluctuations for the simulated events. Experimental results obtained from ¹⁶O–AgBr interactions at 60 AGeV and ³²S–AgBr interactions at 200 AGeV were compared with the events generated by Lund Monte Carlo code (FRITIOF model). FRITIOF model failed to explain the multiplicity fluctuations of pions emitted from ¹⁶O–AgBr interactions at 60 AGeV for both the binning conditions. However, the experimental data agreed well with the FRITIOF model for ³²S–AgBr interactions at 200 AGeV.

Event-to-event fluctuation pattern of pions produced by proton and pion beams is studied in terms of the newly defined erraticity measures $\chi (p, q)$, $\chi_{q}^{'}$ and $\mu_{q}^{'}$ proposed by Cao and Hwa. The analysis reveals the erratic behaviour of the produced pions signifying the chaotic multiparticle production in high-energy hadron–nucleus interactions ($\pi^{-}$ –AgBr interactions at 350 GeV/c and 𝑝–AgBr interactions at 400 GeV/c). However, the chaoticity does not depend on whether the projectile is proton or pion. The results are compared with the results of the VENUS-generated data for the above interactions which suggests that VENUS event generator is unable to reproduce the event-to-event fluctuations of spatial patterns of final states. A comparative study of 𝑝–AgBr interactions and $p-p$ collisions at 400 GeV/c from NA27, with the help of a quantitative parameter for the assessment of pion fluctuation, indicates conclusively that particle production process is more chaotic for hadron–nucleus interactions than for hadron–hadron interactions.