Event-by-event fluctuations in particle multiplicities and transverse energy produced in 158A GeVPb plus Pb collisions

Event-by-event fluctuations in the multiplicities of charged particles and photons, and the total transverse energy in 158A GeV Pb+Pb collisions are studied for a wide range of centralities. For narrow centrality bins the multiplicity and transverse energy distributions are found to be near perfect Gaussians. The effect of detector acceptance on the multiplicity fluctuations has been studied and demonstrated to follow statistical considerations. The centrality dependence of the charged particle multiplicity fluctuations in the measured data has been found to agree reasonably well with those obtained from a participant model. However, for photons the multiplicity fluctuations have been found to be lower compared to those obtained from a participant model. The multiplicity and transverse energy fluctuations have also been compared to those obtained from the VENUS event generator.