Event-by-Event Multiplicity Cumulants as Probes of Partonic Energy Loss and Phase Structure in Au+Au Collisions within a Modified HIJING Model

Abstract

Event-by-event fluctuations of charged hadron multiplicity, net-baryon, and net-electric charge are investigated in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} =$ 20-200 GeV using a modified HIJING Monte Carlo generator. The model incorporates QCD-based partonic energy loss formalisms in both hot (quark-gluon plasma) and cold media, eliminating free tuning parameters. At energies above 100 GeV/nucleon, multiplicity and net-charge fluctuations serve as sensitive probes for medium properties, showing strong agreement with STAR data when hot-medium finite-size effects are included. By introducing a probabilistic distribution for a first-order phase transition, we demonstrate that multiplicity cumulant ratios ($σ^2/M$ and $Sσ$) provide distinctive signatures of a binodal transition, whereas net-charge and net-baryon fluctuations remain relatively insensitive. Furthermore, expanding the kinematic acceptance significantly enhances the sensitivity of these multiplicity fluctuations to the phase transition boundary.