TY  - JOUR
A1  - Vovchenko, Volodymyr
A1  - Koch, Volker
T1  - Thermodynamic approach to proton number fluctuations in baryon-rich heavy-ion matter created at moderate collision energies
T2  - Physics Letters B
N2  - We develop a framework to relate proton number cumulants measured in heavy-ion collisions within a momentum space acceptance to the susceptibilities of baryon number, assuming that particles are emitted from a fireball with uniform distribution of temperature and baryochemical potential, superimposed on a hydrodynamic flow velocity profile. The rapidity acceptance dependence of proton cumulants measured by the HADES Collaboration in √sNN = 2.4 GeV Au-Au appears to be consistent with thermal emission of nucleons from a grand-canonical heat bath, with the extracted baryon number susceptibilities exhibiting an hierarchy χB 4 >> −χB 3 >> χB 2 >> χB 1 . Naively, this could indicate large nonGaussian fluctuations that might point to the presence of the QCD critical point close to the chemical freeze-out at T ∼ 70 MeV and μB ∼ 850 − 900 MeV. However, the description of the experimental data at large rapidity acceptances becomes challenging once the effect of exact baryon number conservation is incorporated, suggesting that more theoretical and experimental studies are needed to reach a firm conclusion.
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/69955
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-699552
SN  - 0370-2693
SN  - 1873-2445
VL  - 833
IS  - 137368
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -