Chaotic sources and percolation of strings in heavy ion collisions

The chaoticity parameter \(\lambda\) of Bose–Einstein correlations is studied as a tool for analyzing the interaction between color strings in multiparticle production at high energies. Different scenarios of this interaction lead to a different behavior of \(\lambda\) with energy and atomic number of the participants. Comparison to the present experimental data favors the percolation of strings scenario. The one of its versions in which \(\lambda\) shows a peculiar dependence on the string density, very similar to the dependence of the fractional average cluster size, looks particularly attractive.