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Closing in on critical net-baryon fluctuations at LHC energies: Cumulants up to third order in Pb–Pb collisions
Document Type
article
Source
Subject
Nuclear and Plasma Physics
Particle and High Energy Physics
Physical Sciences
Mathematical Physics
Astronomical and Space Sciences
Atomic
Molecular
Nuclear
Particle and Plasma Physics
Nuclear & Particles Physics
Mathematical sciences
Physical sciences
Language
Abstract
Fluctuation measurements are important sources of information on the mechanism of particle production at LHC energies. This article reports the first experimental results on third-order cumulants of the net-proton distributions in Pb–Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy sNN=5.02 TeV recorded by the ALICE detector. The results on the second-order cumulants of net-proton distributions at sNN=2.76 and 5.02 TeV are also discussed in view of effects due to the global and local baryon number conservation. The results demonstrate the presence of long-range rapidity correlations between protons and antiprotons. Such correlations originate from the early phase of the collision. The experimental results are compared with HIJING and EPOS model calculations, and the dependence of the fluctuation measurements on the phase-space coverage is examined in the context of lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD) and hadron resonance gas (HRG) model estimations. The measured third-order cumulants are consistent with zero within experimental uncertainties of about 4% and are described well by LQCD and HRG predictions.