Finite size effects on cumulants of the critical mode

Abstract

In this work we study the temperature dependence of the equilibrium variance of critical fluctuations near the QCD critical point. In particular, we take the finite size of the fireball created in heavy-ion collisions into account and systematically obtain corrections to the leading-order result. We find that not only is the variance globally reduced in a finite size system, but for certain combinations of parameters a two-peak structure can develop for temperatures near the critical point.