Speaker
Description
Fluctuations of the net-proton number can be measured experimentally and
thus provide important information about the matter created during heavy
ion collisions. Especially, these quantities may give clues about the
conjectured QCD critical point. We discuss the beam-energy dependence of
ratios of first four cumulants of the net-proton number, obtained using
the phenomenologically motivated model in which critical mode
fluctuations couple to protons and anti-protons. We find that our model
is able to qualitatively capture both the monotonic behavior of the
lowest-order ratio seen in the experimental data from the STAR
Collaboration as well as the non-monotonic behavior of higher-order
ratios. The dependence of our results on the coupling strength and
location of the critical point in the $(\mu,T)$ plane is also discussed.
