Cumulants: it’s more than you think
Cumulants of baryon number are given considerable attention in analyses of heavy-ion collision experiments as possible signatures of the QCD critical point. In this work, we show that the values of the lowest three cumulants can also be utilized to recover information about the isothermal speed of sound and its logarithmic derivative with respect to the baryon number density. This result provides a new method for obtaining information about fundamental properties of nuclear matter studied in heavy-ion collisions, with consequences for both the search for the QCD CP and neutron star studies. While the approximations and the model comparison we considered apply to experiments at low energies, the approach itself can be used at any collision energy provided that measurements of cumulants of baryon number distribution aswell as their temperature dependence are available.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP) (SC-26)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 2242465
- Journal Information:
- Proceedings of Science, Journal Name: Proceedings of Science
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English