Higher Moments of Net Proton Multiplicity Distributions at RHIC
We report the first measurements of the kurtosis (κ [kappa]), skewness (S), and variance (σ [sigma] [superscript 2]) of net-proton multiplicity (N [subscript p]-N [subscript p̅] ) distributions at midrapidity for Au+Au collisions at √sNN=19.6, 62.4, and 200 GeV corresponding to baryon chemical poten...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
American Physical Society
2011
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/60667 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5515-4563 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5839-707X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0031-1963 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9107-6312 |
| Summary: | We report the first measurements of the kurtosis (κ [kappa]), skewness (S), and variance (σ [sigma] [superscript 2]) of net-proton multiplicity (N [subscript p]-N [subscript p̅] ) distributions at midrapidity for Au+Au collisions at √sNN=19.6, 62.4, and 200 GeV corresponding to baryon chemical potentials (μ [mu] B) between 200 and 20 MeV. Our measurements of the products κ [kappa]σ [sigma][superscript 2] and Sσ [sigma], which can be related to theoretical calculations sensitive to baryon number susceptibilities and long-range correlations, are constant as functions of collision centrality. We compare these products with results from lattice QCD and various models without a critical point and study the √sNN dependence of κ [kappa] σ [sigma] [superscript 2]. From the measurements at the three beam energies, we find no evidence for a critical point in the QCD phase diagram for μ [mu] [subscript B] below 200 MeV. |
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