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Modeling of Charged-Neutral Kaon Fluctuations as a Signature of DCC Production in A--A Collisions

Anomalous event-by-event fluctuations of the relative yields of neutral (K$^0_s$) and charged kaon (K$^\pm$) have been predicted to yield a signature for the formation of Disoriented Chiral Condensate (DCC) in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. In this work, we model the production and decay of DCCs in the context of heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, and estimate the sensitivity of large acceptance detectors, such as the ALICE detector, towards the identification of such anomalous decays. Our study is based on the robust statistical observable, $ν_{\rm dyn}$, known for its sensitivity to dynamical fluctuations. We first present simulations without DCCs, based on the HIJING and AMPT models, in order to establish an approximate reference for the magnitude of $ν_{\rm dyn}({\rm K}^{\pm},{\rm K}^{0}_{s})$ and its centrality evolution in Pb--Pb collisions at the TeV energy scale. We next introduce simple phenomenological models of K$^0_s$ vs. K$^\pm$ event-by-event yield fluctuations, which we use to study the feasibility and sensitivity of detection of the production of DCCs in heavy-ion collisions. Although the precision of models such as HIJING and AMPT limit their use as absolute references and thus render anomalous fluctuations difficult to define precisely, our studies demonstrate that the magnitude of $ν_{\rm dyn}({\rm K}^{\pm},{\rm K}^{0}_{s})$ is in fact very sensitive to the presence of small admixture of DCCs in normal non-DCC events. Consequently, while large values of $ν_{\rm dyn}({\rm K}^{\pm},{\rm K}^{0}_{s})$ may not be sufficient to identify the existence of DCCs, nonetheless they constitute a first and necessary condition to signal their possible production in heavy-ion collisions.