High-order fluctuations of temperature in hot QCD matter

Abstract

A new thermodynamic state function is introduced to describe the thermodynamics relevant for the mean transverse momentum fluctuations of charged particles in heavy-ion collisions, which allows us to compute the temperature fluctuations of different orders in hot quantum chromodynamics (QCD) matter for the first time. Consequently, it is found that the temperature fluctuations are suppressed remarkably as the system transitions from the hadron resonance gas (HRG) to the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) with increasing temperature or baryon chemical potential, alongside a negative skewness. This is attributed to the general fact that the heat capacity of QCD matter increases significantly in QGP in comparison to that in HRG. These predictions provide a unique signature to discover the thermodynamical temperature fluctuations in upcoming heavy-ion collision experiments, which also paves a novel way to study QCD thermodynamics and QCD phase diagram through measurements of the mean transverse momentum fluctuations of charged particles.