Nonmonotonic Energy Dependence of Net-Proton Number Fluctuations
J. Adam, L. Adamczyk, J. R. Adams, J. K. Adkins, G. Agakishiev, M. M. Aggarwal, Z. Ahammed, I. Alekseev, D. M. Anderson, A. Aparin, E. C. Aschenauer, M. U. Ashraf, F. G. Atetalla, A. Attri, G. S. Averichev, V. Bairathi, K. N. Barish, A. Behera, R. Bellwied, A. Bhasin, J. Bielčík, J. Bielčíková, L. C. Bland, I. G. Bordyuzhin, J. D. Brandenburg, A. V. Brandin, J. M. Butterworth, H. Caines, M. Calderón de la Barca Sánchez, D. Cebra, I. Chakaberia, P. Chaloupka, B. K. Chan, F-H. Chang, Z. Chang, N. Chankova-Bunzarova, A. Chatterjee, D. Chen, Jian Chen, J. H. Chen, X. Chen, Z. Chen, J. Cheng, M. Cherney, M. Chevalier, S. Choudhury, W. Christie, X. Chu, H. J. Crawford, M. Csanád, M. Daugherity, T. G. Dedovich, I. M. Deppner, A. A. Derevschikov, L. Didenko, X. Dong, J. L. Drachenberg, J. C. Dunlop, T. Edmonds, N. Elsey, J. Engelage, G. Eppley, S. Esumi, O. Evdokimov, A. Ewigleben, O. Eyser, R. Fatemi, S. Fazio, P. Federic, J. Fedorišin, C. J. Feng, Y. Feng, P. Filip, E. Finch, Y. Fisyak, A. Francisco, Ł. Fulek, C. A. Gagliardi, T. Galatyuk, F. J. M. Geurts, S. M. Gibson, K. Gopal, X. Gou, D. Grosnick, W. Guryn, A. I. Hamad, A. Hamed, S. Harabasz, J. W. Harris, S. He, W. He, X. H. He, Y. He, S. Heppelmann, S. Heppelmann, N. Herrmann, Eric A. Hoffman, L. Holub, Y. Hong, S. Horvat
Abstract
Nonmonotonic variation with collision energy (sqrt[s_{NN}]) of the moments of the net-baryon number distribution in heavy-ion collisions, related to the correlation length and the susceptibilities of the system, is suggested as a signature for the quantum chromodynamics critical point. We report the first evidence of a nonmonotonic variation in the kurtosis times variance of the net-proton number (proxy for net-baryon number) distribution as a function of sqrt[s_{NN}] with 3.1 σ significance for head-on (central) gold-on-gold (Au+Au) collisions measured solenoidal tracker at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Data in noncentral Au+Au collisions and models of heavy-ion collisions without a critical point show a monotonic variation as a function of sqrt[s_{NN}].