Abstract:

Power law distributions are ubiquitous. They appear in physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, and in many other fields. Particle production in experiments at the existing and upcoming facilities like the LHC, RHIC, FAIR, NICA, and so on follow (or are expected to follow) power law distributions. In the field of physics of high-energy collisions (lead on lead, proton on proton etc.), the non-extensive power-law distributions have caught the attention of practitioners because of its connection with the basic principles of physics. The nonextensive power law distributions can appear when there are fluctuations in a system. However, fluctuations are not limited to physical systems only. Social systems display fluctuation too. It has recently been observed that the nonextensive power-law distributions that can potentially describe particle production at the facilities like NICA can be used to model a phenomenon called “delay discounting” studied in behavioural science. In this seminar, we will review some aspects of the nonextensive power-law distributions, and will indicate how the nonextensive distributions can connect two fields as different as high energy physics and behavioural science.