Onset of deconfinement and search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter at CERN SPS energies

Maciej Rybczynski

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arXiv · 1211.6541

Onset of deconfinement and search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter at CERN SPS energies

Maciej Rybczynski

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Abstract

The exploration of the QCD phase diagram particularly the search for a phase transition from hadronic to partonic degrees of freedom and possibly a critical endpoint, is one of the most challenging tasks in present heavy-ion physics. As observed by the NA49 experiment, several hadronic observables in central Pb+Pb collisions at the CERN SPS show qualitative changes in their energy dependence. These features are not observed in elementary interactions and indicate the onset of a phase transition in the SPS energy range. The existence of a critical point is expected to result in the increase of event-by-event fluctuations of various hadronic observables provided that the freeze-out of the measured hadrons occurs close to its location in the phase diagram and the evolution of the final hadron phase does not erase the fluctuations signals. A selection of NA49 results on di-pion and proton intermittency from the scan of the phase diagram will be discussed.

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Maciej Rybczynski. 2012-11-28. Onset of deconfinement and search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter at CERN SPS energies. https://arxiv.org/abs/1211.6541

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