1999/03/31 by M. Stephanov, Krishna Rajagopal, K. Rajagopal +2 · 11 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Critical phenomena #Critical point (mathematics) #Event (particle physics) #Hadron #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Large Hadron Collider #Multiplicity (mathematics) #Nuclear physics #Observable #Particle physics #Phase transition #Physics #Pion #QCD matter #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quark–gluon plasma #hep-ph #nucl-ex #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.60.114028
published as Phys. Rev. D 60, 114028 (1999) · 58 pages, 2 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev. D
arxiv created 1999/08/06 · openalex publication_date 1999/11/10 · arxiv updated 2016/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The event-by-event fluctuations of suitably chosen observables in heavy ion collisions at CERN SPS, BNL RHIC, and CERN LHC can tell us about the thermodynamic properties of the hadronic system at freeze-out. By studying these fluctuations as a function of varying control parameters, it is possible to learn much about the phase diagram of QCD. As a timely example, we stress the methods by which present experiments at the CERN SPS can locate the second-order critical end point of the first-order transition between quark-gluon plasma and hadron matter. Those event-by-event signatures which are characteristic of freeze-out in the vicinity of the critical point will exhibit nonmonotonic dependence on control parameters. We focus on observables constructed from the multiplicity and transverse momenta of charged pions. We first consider how the event-by-event fluctuations of such observables are affected by Bose-Einstein correlations, by resonances which decay after freeze-out, and by fluctuations in the transverse flow velocity. We compare our thermodynamic predictions for such noncritical event-by-event fluctuations with NA49 data, finding broad agreement. We then focus on effects due to thermal contact between the observed pions and a heat bath with a given (possibly singular) specific heat, due to the direct coupling between the critical fluctuations of the sigma field and the observed pions. We also discuss the effect of the pions produced in the decay of sigma particles just above threshold after freeze-out on the inclusive pion spectrum and on multiplicity fluctuations. We estimate the size of these nonmonotonic effects, which appear near the critical point, including restrictions imposed by finite size and finite time, and conclude that they should be easily observable.