Quark Matter 2025

Non-Fluctuational Signature of the QCD Critical Point

Not scheduled

20m

Goethe University Frankfurt, Campus Westend, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1, 60629 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Oral QCD phase diagram & critical point

Speaker

Noriyuki Sogabe (University of Illinois Chicago)

Description

We study the influence of the QCD critical point on the trajectories describing the evolution of the expanding fireball in heavy-ion collisions. We find that the lines of constant specific entropy (entropy per baryon) on the phase diagram are drawn towards a special point on the coexistence (first-order) line where the specific entropy reaches a maximum [1]. We study the interplay between this feature of the isentropic trajectories and the freezeout curve. If the critical point is located near the freezeout curve, a region inaccessible by isentropic expansion appears on the freezeout curve. This behavior of the isentropes could provide a novel, non-fluctuational signature of the critical point requiring significantly lower statistics than the fluctuational signatures.

[1] Maneesha Sushama Pradeep, Noriyuki Sogabe, Mikhail Stephanov, and Ho-Ung Yee, Phys. Rev. C 109, 064905 (2024).