2020/02/16 by N. Davis, Davis, Nikolaos
Environmental Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Soil Geostatistics and Mapping #Stochastic processes and statistical mechanics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2002.06636
openalex publication_date 2020/02/16 · openalex created_date 2022/07/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The search for experimental signatures of the critical point (CP) of strongly\ninteracting matter is one of the main objectives of the NA61/SHINE experiment\nat CERN SPS. In the course of the experiment, a beam momentum and system size\nscan is performed. Local proton density fluctuations in transverse momentum\nspace represent an order parameter of the chiral phase transition and are\nexpected to scale according to a universal power-law in the vicinity of the CP;\nwe probe their behavior through an intermittency analysis of the proton second\nscaled factorial moments (SSFMs) in transverse momentum space. Previous such\nanalyses revealed power-law behavior in NA49 Si+Si collisions at 158A\nGeV/c, with no intermittency observed in lighter or heavier NA49 & NA61/SHINE\nsystems at the same energy. We now extend the analysis to NA61/SHINE Ar+Sc\ncollisions at 150A GeV/c, similar in size and baryochemical potential to\nNA49 Si+Si. We employ statistical techniques to subtract non-critical\nbackground and estimate statistical and systematic uncertainties. Subsequently,\nwe use Monte Carlo simulations to assess the statistical significance of the\nobserved intermittency effect.\n