Statistical distributions in the thermal model

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.An attempt is made to use the thermal model to determine statistical particle number fluctuations in the presence of exact conservation laws. A basis is provided, which will be useful to extend the range of applications of the thermal model with both a large number of conserved charges as well as quantum statistics. The central limit theorem and its related expansions provide a flexible mathematical tool for calculation of statistical fluctuations, and allows for application of the canonical ensemble to high energy particle collision data. A first analysis of the NA49 CC data suggests that statistical multiplicity fluctuations can be understood within the statistical hadronization model