2024/09/28 by Athanasios Brofas, Brofas, Athanasios, Manolis Zampetakis +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.19412
openalex publication_date 2024/09/28 · openalex created_date 2024/10/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The search for remnants of the QCD chiral critical point is a central objective of current and future high-energy ion collision experiments. Previous studies suggest that a scaling law relating higher-order factorial moments of hadron multiplicity fluctuations to the second factorial moment could serve as a tool for detecting the QCD critical point. However, we demonstrate that this scaling law is not unique to critical phenomena. Instead, it emerges as a general property of distributions by extending the concept of hypercontractivity, originally applied to ordinary moments, to factorial moments. We present examples of distribution classes that exhibit the same higher-order factorial moment scaling as multiplicity fluctuations in the symmetry-broken phase. This insight allows us to explain the recent intermittency analysis results from the STAR experiment at RHIC (arXiv:2301.11062), where no indication of criticality was observed.