QCD Critical Point and High Baryon Density Matter

Abstract

We report the latest results on the search for the QCD critical point in the QCD phase diagram through high energy heavy-ion collisions. The measurements discussed are based on the higher moments of the net-proton multiplicity distributions in heavy-ion collisions. A non-monotonic variation in the product of kurtosis times the variance of the net-proton distribution is observed as a function of the collision energy with 3$\sigma$ significance. We also discuss the results of the thermal model in explaining the measured particle yield ratios in heavy-ion collisions and comparison of the different variants of hardon resonance gas model calculation to the data on higher moments of net-proton distributions. We end with a note that the upcoming programs in high baryon density regime at various experimental facilities will complete the search for the QCD critical point through heavy-ion collisions.