Baseline study for higher moments of net-charge distribution at RHIC energies

Abstract

Lattice QCD models predict the presence of a critical point in the QCD phase diagram where the first order phase transition between the hadron gas and Quark-Gluon Plasma ceases to exist. Higher moments of conserved quantities, such as net-charge, net-baryon number and net-strangeness, are proposed to be sensitive probes for locating the critical point. The moments of net-charge distributions have been studied as a function of centrality for {Au+Au} collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 7.7 to 200 GeV using three event generators, {\it viz.}, UrQMD, HIJING, and THERMINATOR-2. The effect of centrality selection, resonance production, as well as contributions from particle species to the net-charge moments and their products have been studied. It is observed that mean of the net-charge distributions are dominated by net-protons, whereas standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis closely follow net-pion distributions. These results, along with the predictions from Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model, are presented.

7 pages, 9 figures, submitted to PRC

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• The order of the quantum chromodynamics transition predicted by the standard model of particle physics
• Probing freeze-out conditions in heavy ion collisions with moments of charge fluctuations
• Freeze-out Conditions in Heavy Ion Collisions from QCD Thermodynamics
• QCD at finite chemical potential with six time slices
• Canonical partition function and finite density phase transition in lattice QCD
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Freeze-out conditions from net-proton and net-charge fluctuations at RHIC
• Equilibrium Statistical-Thermal Models in High-Energy Physics
• Recent results on event-by-event fluctuations from the RHIC Beam Energy Scan program in the STAR experiment
• Measurement of the ratio of the sixth order to the second order cumulant of net-proton multiplicity distributions in relativistic heavy-ion collisions