Energy dependence of intermittency for charged hadrons in Au plus Au collisions at RHIC

Density fluctuations near the QCD critical point can be probed via an intermittency analysis in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We report the first measurement of intermittency in Au+Au collisions at root s(NN) = 7.7-200 GeV measured by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The scaled factorial moments of identified charged hadrons are analyzed at mid-rapidity and within the transverse momentum phase space. We observe a power-law behavior of scaled factorial moments in Au+Au collisions and a decrease in the extracted scaling exponent (v) from peripheral to central collisions. The v is consistent with a constant for different collisions energies in the mid-central (10-40%) collisions. Moreover, the v in the 0-5% most central Au+Au collisions exhibits a non-monotonic energy dependence that reaches a minimum around root s(NN) = 27 GeV. The physics implications on the QCD phase structure are discussed. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This article reports the first measurement of density fluctuations near the QCD critical point in Au+Au collisions via an intermittency analysis. The results show a power-law behavior of scaled factorial moments and a decreasing scaling exponent v from peripheral to central collisions. The energy dependence of v exhibits a non-monotonic pattern, reaching a minimum at around root s(NN) = 27 GeV.