English

Proton number fluctuations in partial chemical equilibrium

Nuclear Theory 2021-11-10 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We calculate volume-independent ratios of cumulants of the net-proton number distribution up to sixth order in a fireball that cools down after the chemical freeze-out. A hadron resonance gas model is used together with the assumption of partial chemical equilibrium, which fixes the number of observed stable hadrons after the chemical freeze-out. It is shown that due to only weak departure from the statistical Boltzmann distribution, also the volume-independent ratios of higher-order cumulants of the net-proton number show only weak dependence on the temperature. This observation supports the possibility to measure non-critical cumulants at chemical freeze-out even after subsequent cooling in the hadronic phase. Cumulants of the net-baryon number behave similarly, while those for the kaon number vary more strongly with the temperature. Our results are relevant for the current fluctuation studies of the RHIC-BES runs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2107.03830,
  title  = {Proton number fluctuations in partial chemical equilibrium},
  author = {Boris Tomasik and Paula Hillmann and Marcus Bleicher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.03830},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T04:00:00.285Z