학술논문

Collision energy dependence of moments of net-kaon multiplicity distributions at RHIC
Document Type
article
Source
Subject
nucl-ex
hep-ex
hep-ph
nucl-th
Nuclear & Particles Physics
Mathematical Physics
Astronomical and Space Sciences
Atomic
Molecular
Nuclear
Particle and Plasma Physics
Language
Abstract
Fluctuations of conserved quantities such as baryon number, charge, and strangeness are sensitive to the correlation length of the hot and dense matter created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions and can be used to search for the QCD critical point. We report the first measurements of the moments of net-kaon multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions at sNN=7.7, 11.5, 14.5, 19.6, 27, 39, 62.4, and 200 GeV. The collision centrality and energy dependence of the mean (M), variance (σ2), skewness (S), and kurtosis (κ) for net-kaon multiplicity distributions as well as the ratio σ2/M and the products Sσ and κσ2 are presented. Comparisons are made with Poisson and negative binomial baseline calculations as well as with UrQMD, a transport model (UrQMD) that does not include effects from the QCD critical point. Within current uncertainties, the net-kaon cumulant ratios appear to be monotonic as a function of collision energy.