Asymptotic properties of high-pT particle production in hadron-hadron, hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at high energies

The concept of z-scaling reflecting the general features of internal particle substructure, constituent interaction and mechanism of real particle formation is reviewed. Experimental data on the cross sections obtained at ISR, SpS and Tevatron are used in the analysis. The properties of data z-presentation, the energy and angular independencies, the power law, Aand F -dependencies, are discussed. It is argued that the properties reflect the fundamental symmetries such as self-similarity, locality, fractality and scale-relativity. The use of z-scaling to search for new physics phenomena in hadron-hadron, hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions is suggested. The violation of z-scaling characterized by the change of the fractal dimension is considered as a new and complimentary signature of nuclear phase transition. Presented at the 6th International Workshop ”Relativistic Nuclear Physics: from Hundreds of MeV to TeV”, September 10-16, 2001, Varna, Bulgaria E-mail: [email protected]