Moment analysis of multiplicity distributions

Moment analysis of global multiplicity distributions previously done for e ⁺ e ^? and hh processes is applied to hA and AA collisions. Oscillations of cumulants as functions of their rank are found in all processes for which experimental data are available. A similar oscillation pattern is found in the dual parton model and quark-gluon string models but not in the phenomenological fits such as modified negative binomial distributions. The zeros of the truncated generating function move closer and closer to the unity circle in the complex z-plane when the complexity of the collision increases.