Search for the QCD Critical Point in High Energy Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

QCD critical point is a landmark region in the QCD phase diagram outlined by temperature as a function of baryon chemical potential. To the right of this second-order phase transition point, one expects first order quark-hadron phase transition boundary, towards the left a crossover region, top of it lies the quark gluon plasma phase and below it the hadronic phase. Hence locating the QCD critical point through relativistic heavy-ion collision experiments is an active area of research. Cumulants of conserved quantities in strong interaction, such as net-baryon, net-charge, and net-strangeness, are suggested to be sensitive to the physics of QCD critical point and are therefore useful observables in the study of the phase transition between quark-gluon plasma and hadronic matter. We review the experimental status of the search for the QCD critical point via the measurements of cumulants of net-particle distributions in heavy ion collisions. We discuss various experimental challenges and associated corrections in such fluctuation measurements. We also comment on the physics implications of the measurements by comparing them with theoretical calculations. This is followed by a discussion on future experiments and measurements related to high baryonic density QCD matter.

Contribution to Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics. 56 pages and 36 figures

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Cited by in corpus (18)

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• Holographic study of higher-order baryon number susceptibilities at finite temperature and density
• Effects of finite volume and magnetic fields on thermodynamic properties of quark matter and fluctuations of conserved charges
• Correlations and fluctuations in a magnetized PNJL model with and without inverse magnetic catalysis effect
• Bubble nucleation in the two-flavor quark-meson model
• Information entropy for central ${}^{197}$Au+${}^{197}$Au collisions with the ultrarelativistic quantum molecular dynamics model
• Search for the QCD Critical Point in High Energy Nuclear Collisions: A Status Report
• Quenching through the QCD chiral phase transition
• Beam Energy Dependence of Fifth and Sixth-Order Net-proton Number Fluctuations in Au+Au Collisions at RHIC
• Correlations and fluctuations in a magnetized three-flavor PNJL model with and without inverse magnetic catalysis effect
• Bubble dynamics in the Polyakov quark-meson model
• Collision-energy Dependence of Deuteron Cumulants and Proton-deuteron Correlations in Au+Au collisions at RHIC
• Measurement of correlations among net-charge, net-proton, and net-kaon multiplicity distributions in Pb$-$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\text{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV
• Effects of Initial Density Fluctuations on Cumulants in Au + Au Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7 GeV
• Effects of magnetic field on the evolution of energy density fluctuations
• Finite-size behavior of higher-order cumulant ratios near criticality in two-dimensional Potts models