2018/12/31 by Ning Yu, Dingwei Zhang, Xiaofeng Luo · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #nucl-th #hep-ph #nucl-ex
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1674-1137/44/1/014002
published as Chinese Physics C 44, 014002 (2020) · 4 pages, 5 figures, To be published in Chinese Physics C
arxiv created 2019/10/25 · arxiv updated 2019/12/23
We propose the transverse velocity (βT) dependence of the anti-deuteron to deuteron ratio as a new observable to search for the QCD critical point in heavy-ion collisions. The QCD critical point can attract the system evolution trajectory in the QCD phase diagram, which is known as focusing effect. To quantify this effect, we employ thermal model and hadronic transport model to simulate the dynamical particle emission along a hypothetical focusing trajectory near critical point. We found the focusing effect can lead to anomalous βT dependence of p/p, d/d and 3He/3He ratios. We examined the βT dependence of p/p and d/d ratios of central Au+Au collisions at √sNN = 7.7 to 200 GeV measured by the STAR experiment at RHIC. Surprisingly, we only observe a negative slope in βT dependence of d/d ratio at √sNN = 19.6 GeV, which indicates the trajectory evolution has passed through the critical region. In the future, we could constrain the location of the critical point and/or width of the critical region by making precise measurements on the βT dependence of d/d ratio at different energies and rapidity.