ar X iv : h ep - p h / 98 10 54 5 v 1 3 0 O ct 1 99 8 Searching for cold spots in multipion systems

Local fluctuations of pion density in momentum space may lead to Bose-Einstein condensation. Conditions for this phenomenon to occur in high-energy collisions and possibilities of its experimental investigation are discussed. 1. The possibility of Bose-Einstein condensation in a dense multipion system was first indicated in the pioneering work by Pratt [1]. Recently, the general solution of the problem has been obtained for gaussian distributions [2] and also in the general framework of uncorrelated production [3, 4, 5]. In the present note, using the results of [2]-[5] we discuss the conditions for creation of such a pion condensate in high-energy collisions and the possibilities of its experimental discovery. The main conclusion of this investigation is that, although it seems rather unlikely that the condensate may include all pions produced in the collision, the possibility of its creation in a limited region of phase-space is not excluded and thus worth experimental investigation. The specific characteristics of the condensate which may help in its experimental identification are (i) rather small relative momenta of the pions (∆p < 100 MeV);