Coherent states and particle production

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Abstract
Hadron production at high energies is discussed in terms of coherent states. We suggest that the scattering operator and the pion field density operator take on simple forms in the coherent-state representation. In particular, we show that for a wide variety of configurations of the pion field the density operator can be written in diagonal form in the coherent-state representation. When this is possible, one obtains the statistical theory of pion production which we have discussed recently. We also construct a solvable unitary model in which the total, elastic, and inclusive cross sections go to constants at high energy, while the exclusive cross sections go to zero like a power of energy. In order to take into account the isotopic spin of the pions, we generalize the concept of coherent states and construct states with definite charge and isotopic spin.