Identifying the presence of the critical end point in QCD phase diagram by higher order susceptibilities

Abstract

For the first time, we investigate susceptibilities of dense quark matter up to $8$th order using an effective model. Generally higher order susceptibilities will have more sign changes and larger magnitude, thus should give more information about the presence and location of the conjectured QCD critical end point (CEP). Two cases are studied, one with the CEP and one being crossover phase transition throughout the QCD phase diagram. It is found that a rapid crossover transition can also give similar sign pattern as the case with the CEP and yield large signal. We propose that using several kinds of ions for collision to search for a wider range on the QCD phase diagram may help.