Acceptance Corrections and Extreme-Independent Models in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Kopeliovich's suggestion [nucl-th/0306044] to perform nuclear geometry (Glauber) calculations using different cross sections according to the experimental configuration is quite different from the standard practice of the last 20 years and leads to a different nuclear geometry definition for each experiment. The standard procedure for experimentalists is to perform the nuclear geometry calculation using the total inelastic N-N cross section, which results in a common nuclear geometry definition for all experiments. The incomplete acceptance of individual experiments is taken into account by correcting the detector response for the probability of measuring zero for an inelastic collision, which can often be determined experimentally. This clearly separates experimental issues such as different acceptances from theoretical issues which should apply in general to all experiments. Extreme-Independent models are used to illustrate the conditions for which the two methods give consistent or inconsistent results.