Statistical Scrutiny of Particle Spectra in ep Collisions

Charged particle multiplicity distributions in positron–proton deep inelastic scattering at a centre-of-mass energy s√ = 300 GeV, measured in the hadronic centre-of-mass frames and in different pseudorapidity windows are studied in the framework of two statistical distributions, the shifted Gompertz distribution and the Weibull distribution. Normalised moments, normalised factorial moments and the H-moments of the multiplicity distributions are determined. The phenomenon of oscillatory behaviour of the counting statistics and the Koba-Nielsen-Olesen (KNO) scaling behaviour are investigated. This is the first such analysis using these data. In addition, projections of the two distributions for the expected average charged multiplicities obtainable at the proposed future ep colliders.