We have studied the effect of limited statistics of data on measurement of the different order of cumulants of net-proton distribution assuming that the proton and antiproton distributions follow Possionian and Binomial distributions with initial parameters determined from experimental results for two top center of mass energies ($\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=200$ and $62.4$ GeV) in most central ($0-5$%) Au$+$Au collisions at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). In this simulation, we observe that the central values for higher order cumulants have a strong dependence on event sample size and due to statistical randomness the central values of higher order cumulants could become negative. We also present a study on the determination of the statistical error on cumulants using delta theorem, bootstrap and sub-group methods and verified their suitability by employing a Monte Carlo procedure. Based on our study we find that the bootstrap method provides a robust way for statistical error estimation on high order cumulants. We also present the exclusion limits on the minimum event statistics needed for determination of cumulants if the signal strength (phase transition or critical point) is at a level of $5$% and $10$% above the statistical level. This study will help the experiments to arrive at the minimum required event statistics and choice of proper method for statistical error estimation for high order cumulant measurements.
We perform a systematic study on the effect of non-uniform track efficiency correction in higher-order cumulant analysis in heavy-ion collisions. Through analytical derivation, we find that the true values of cumulants can be successfully reproduced by the efficiency correction with an average of the realistic detector efficiency for particles with the same charges within each single phase space. The theoretical conclusions are supported by a toy model simulation by tuning the non-uniformity of the efficiency employed in the track-by-track efficiency correction method. The valid averaged effic…
Higher-order cumulants of conserved charge distributions are sensitive observables to probe the critical fluctuations near QCD critical point in heavy-ion collisions. Due to high interaction rate, pileup event can be one of the major sources of background in the measurements of higher-order cumulants. In this paper, we studied the effects of pileup events on higher-order cumulants of proton multiplicity distributions using UrQMD model. It is found that the proposed pileup correction fails if the correction parameters are determined by the Glauber fitting of charged particle multiplicities, whi…
We studied the centrality selection effect on cumulants (up to fourth order) and the cumulants ratios of net-proton multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 7.7, 19.6 and 200 GeV from UrQMD model. The net-proton cumulants are calculated with collision centralities by using charged particle multiplicity from different pesudorapidity ($η$) region. By comparing the results from various collision centralities, we found that the autocorrelation effects are not significant in the results with collision centralities "refmult-3" and "refmult-2", which are using mid-…
The azimuthal correlations between local flow planes at different (pseudo)rapidities ($η$) may reveal important details of the initial nuclear matter density distributions in heavy-ion collisions. Extensive experimental measurements of a factorization ratio ($r_2$) and its derivative ($F_2$) have shown evidence of the longitudinal flow-plane decorrelation. However, nonflow effects also affect this observable and prevent a quantitative understanding of the phenomenon. In this paper, to distinguish decorrelation and nonflow effects, we propose a new cumulant observable, $T_2$, which largely supp…
In studies of heavy-ion collisions, fluctuations of conserved quantities are considered as an important signal of the transition between the hadronic and partonic phases of nuclear matter. In this paper, it is investigated how the local charge conservation affects higher-order cumulants of net-charge distributions at LHC energies. Simple expressions for the cumulants are derived under the assumption that particle-antiparticle pairs are produced in local processes from sources that are nearly uncorrelated in rapidity. For calculations with these expressions, one needs to know only the second cu…
A series of new flow observables mixed harmonic multi-particle cumulants (MHC), which allow for the first time to quantify the correlations strength between different order of flow coefficients with various moments, was investigated using hydrodynamic model. These new observables are constructed based on multi-particle cumulants, and thus by design will be less sensitive to the non-flow contaminations. In addition to the previous study of correlation involving two flow coefficients with their second moments, both correlations of three flow coefficients and the correlations of higher order mome…
Cumulants of baryon number are given considerable attention in analyses of heavy-ion collision experiments as possible signatures of the QCD critical point. In this work, we show that the values of the lowest three cumulants can also be utilized to recover information about the isothermal speed of sound and its logarithmic derivative with respect to the baryon number density. This result provides a new method for obtaining information about fundamental properties of nuclear matter studied in heavy-ion collisions, with consequences for both the search for the QCD critical point and neutron star…
Higher-order cumulants of the distributions of conserved charges, such as net-baryon number, are sensitive to the quantum chromodynamics(QCD) phase transition and the QCD critical point. We calculate the cumulants and correlation functions of proton, antiproton, and net-proton multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 7.7$ GeV using a multiphase transport model(AMPT). The AMPT model can basically describe the trends of cumulants, cumulant ratios, (normalized) correlation functions of the proton and net-proton measured by the STAR experiment. The multiproton (baryon) co…
We introduce a fast and simple method of computing cumulants of net-proton or net-charge fluctuations in event-by-event hydrodynamic simulations of heavy-ion collisions. One evaluates the mean numbers of particles in every hydrodynamic event. Cumulants are then expressed as a function of these mean numbers. We implement the corrections due to global conservation laws. The method is tested using ideal hydrodynamic simulations of Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ AGeV with the NeXSPheRIO code. Results are in good agreement with experimental data on net-proton and net-charge fluctuations by…
In these proceedings, we present the higher-order cumulants of proton multiplicity distributions of the fixed-target (FXT) run in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 3.0 GeV. The cumulant ratios are presented as a function of centrality and collision energy. The proton cumulant ratio C4/C2 is consistent with fluctuations driven by baryon number conservation and indicates an energy regime dominated by hadronic interactions. These data imply that the QCD critical point could exist at energies higher than 3 GeV if created in heavy-ion collisions.
The multiplicity percentile dependence of cumulants, of net-proton number distributions in Au$-$Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = $ 200 GeV and Pb$-$Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = $ 2.76 TeV has been investigated using the Angantyr model (the heavy-ion extension of the \textsc{Pythia 8} model). The effects of finite transverse momentum ($p_{\mathrm T}$) and pseudorapidity ($η$) acceptance on the net-proton cumulants have also been studied. Furthermore, the effects of the hydrodynamic expansion and feed down from weak decays were explored. It was found that radial flow has substantial impact…
We calculate the cumulants and correlation functions of net-kaon multiplicity distributions in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 7.7$ GeV using a multiphase transport model (AMPT) with both a new coalescence mechanism and all charge conservation laws. The AMPT model can qualitatively describe the centrality dependences of the net-kaon cumulants and cumulant ratios measured by the STAR experiment. By focusing on the stage evolution of the cumulants, cumulant ratios, and correlation functions, we reveal several key effects on the fluctuations and correlations of strangeness during the dynamic…
University of Tennessee（田纳西大学）；University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）；Texas Southern University（德克萨斯南方大学）；Brookhaven National Laboratory（布鲁克海文国家实验室）；University of North Carolina, Greensboro（北卡罗来纳大学格林斯伯勒分校）；University of Houston（休斯顿大学）
The Fourier analysis of the final particle distribution followed by cumulant study of the Fourier coefficient event-by-event fluctuation is one of the main approaches for testing the collective evolution in the heavy-ion collision. Using a multidimensional generating function, we propose a method to extract any possible cumulant of multiharmonic flow fluctuations and classify them in terms of the order of cumulants and harmonics involved in them. In particular, we show that there are 33 distinct cumulants with orders $2,3,4,5$ and harmonics $2,3,4,5$. We compute the normalized version of these…
Effects of resonance weak decays and hadronic re-scattering on the proton number fluctuations in Au + Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}} = 5$ GeV from JAM model
We propose a purity correction to subtract effects of combinatorial backgrounds from cumulants of hyperon number distributions. We argue that cumulants and mix-cumulants of sidebands, whose yield is comparable with that of background particles in the signal region, can be used for the correction. The method is demonstrated in a simple toy model by introducing effects of reconstruction efficiencies and backgrounds. We show that topological cut parameters for hyperon reconstructions can be optimized to achieve the best statistical significance after purity and efficiency corrections. The method …
We derive the relation between cumulants of a conserved charge measured in a subvolume of a thermal system and the corresponding grand-canonical susceptibilities, taking into account exact global conservation of that charge. The derivation is presented for an arbitrary equation of state, with the assumption that the subvolume is sufficiently large to be close to the thermodynamic limit. Our framework -- the subensemble acceptance method (SAM) -- quantifies the effect of global conservation laws and is an important step toward a direct comparison between cumulants of conserved charges measured …
