Light nuclei production as a probe of the QCD phase diagram
Academic Article
Overview
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
2018 The Author(s) It is generally believed that the quark-hadron transition at small values of baryon chemical potentials B is a crossover but changes to a first-order phase transition with an associated critical endpoint (CEP) as B increases. Such a B-dependent quark-hadron transition is expected to result in a double-peak structure in the collision energy dependence of the baryon density fluctuation in heavy-ion collisions with one at lower energy due to the spinodal instability during the first-order phase transition and another at higher energy due to the critical fluctuations in the vicinity of the CEP. By analyzing the data on the p, d and 3H yields in central heavy-ion collisions within the coalescence model for light nuclei production, we find that the relative neutron density fluctuation n=(n)2/n2 at kinetic freeze-out indeed displays a clear peak at sNN=8.8GeV and a possible strong re-enhancement at sNN=4.86GeV. Our findings thus provide a strong support for the existence of a first-order phase transition at large B and its critical endpoint at a smaller B in the temperature versus baryon chemical potential plane of the QCD phase diagram.
