Search

Using the single-spin flipping dynamics, we study the nonequilibrium evolution near the entire phase boundary of the 3D Ising model, and find that the average of relaxation time (RT) near the first-order phase transition line (1st-PTL) is significantly larger than that near the critical point (CP). As the system size increases, the average of RT near the 1st-PTL increases at a higher power compared to that near the CP. We further show that RT near the 1st-PTL is not only non-self-averaging, but actually self-diverging: relative variance of RT increases with system size. The presence of coexisting and metastable states results in a substantial increase in randomness near the 1st-PTL, and therefore makes the equilibrium more difficult to achieve., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

Within the framework of intermittency analysis, a search for critical fluctuations is ongoing to locate the possible critical point in the quantum chromodynamics phase diagram. In this study, self-similar critical fluctuations from a critical Monte Carlo (CMC) model have been incorporated into the cascade ultrarelativistic quantum molecular dynamics (UrQMD) model. This hybrid UrQMD+CMC model exhibits a clear power-law behavior of scaled factorial moment for charged particles in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 7.7-200 GeV. By comparing the UrQMD+CMC model results with those from the STAR experiment, it is found that the value of a calculated scaling exponent falls in the range of the experimental measurement when 1-2 \% signal of intermittency fluctuations is added into the UrQMD sample., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, published version

Within the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective field theory, considering the violation of boost invariance of the rapidity distribution, we correct the normalization scheme of the longitudinal rapidity ridge correlations. After this correction, the large-rapidity ridge correlation rebounds after bottoming, consistent with the observed data from the CMS detector. It is also found that the correlation rebound appears around the sum of the saturation momentum of the projectile and target, and moves to larger rapidities at higher collision energies. These features directly result from the saturation and the quantum evolution of gluons within the framework of the CGC.

Exploration of the QCD phase diagram and critical point is one of the main goals in current relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The QCD critical point is expected to belong to a three-dimensional (3D) Ising universality class. Machine learning techniques are found to be powerful in distinguishing different phases of matter and provide a new way to study the phase diagram. We investigate phase transitions in the 3D cubic Ising model using supervised learning methods. It is found that a 3D convolutional neural network can be trained to effectivelly predict physical quantities in different spin configurations. With a uniform neural network architecture, it can encode phases of matter and identify both second- and first-order phase transitions. The important features that discriminate different phases in the classification processes are investigated. These findings can help study and understand QCD phase transitions in relativistic heavy-ion collisions., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, published version

It is proposed that the $O(n)$ spin and geometrical percolation models can help to study the QCD phase diagram due to the universality properties of the phase transition. In this paper, correlations and fluctuations of various sizes of cluster in the Ising model are systematically studied. With a finite size system, we demonstrate how to use the finite size scaling and fixed point behavior to search for critical point. At critical point, the independency of system size is found from skewness and kurtosis of the maximum, second and third largest cluster and their correlations. It is similar to the Binder-ratio, which has provided a remarkable identification of the critical point. Through an explanation of the universal characteristic of skewness and kurtosis of the order parameter, a possible application to the relativistic heavy-ion collisions is also discussed., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by IJMPE

In order to estimate qualitatively the influence of nonequilibrium evolution in relativistic heavy ion collisions, we use the three dimensional Ising model with Metropolis algorithm to study the evolution from nonequilibrium to equilibrium on the phase boundary. The evolution of order parameter approaches its equilibrium value exponentially, the same as that given by Langevin equation. The average relaxation time is defined which is demonstrated to well represent the relaxation time in dynamical equations. It is shown that the average relaxation time at critical temperature diverges as the zth power of system size. The third and the fourth cumulants of order parameter during the nonequilibrium evolution could be either positive or negative, depending on the observation time, consistent with dynamical models at T > Tc. It is found that the nonequilibrium evolution at T > Tc lasts very short, and the influence is weaker than that at T < Tc. Those qualitative features are instructive to determine experimentally the critical point and the phase boundary of QCD., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; add fig.3 and up date the eq.(9-10), and contents

Local density fluctuations near the QCD critical point has been suggested to exhibit a power-law behavior which can be probed by an intermittency analysis on scaled factorial moment (SFM) in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The collision energy and centrality dependence of the second-order SFMs are systematically investigated in Au $+$ Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27, 39, 62.4, and 200 GeV within the UrQMD model. We estimate the noncritical background in the measurement of intermittency and propose a cumulative variable method to effectively remove the background contributions. We further study the effect of particle detection efficiency by implementing the RHIC (STAR) experimental tracking efficiencies in the UrQMD events. A cell-by-cell method is proposed for experimental application of efficiency corrections on SFM. This work can provide a guidance of background subtraction and efficiency correction for the experimental measurement of intermittency in the search of the QCD critical point in heavy-ion collisions., Comment: Replaced with the published version

Radial flow can be directly extracted from the azimuthal distribution of mean transverse rapidity. We apply the event-plane method and the two-particle correlation method to estimate the anisotropic Fourier coefficient of the azimuthal distribution of mean transverse rapidity. Using the event sample generated by a multiphase transport model with string melting, we show that both methods are effective. For the two-particle correlation method to be reliable, the mean number of particles in an azimuthal bin must be above a certain threshold. Using these two methods, anisotropic radial flow can be estimated in a model-independent way in relativistic heavy-ion collisions., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures

We study ridge correlations of the glasma in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=7$ TeV by using the color glass condensate (CGC) formalism. The azimuthal collimation at long range rapidity is intrinsic to glasma dynamics and is reproduced here. When rapidity window enlarges, ridge correlations in two dimensional $\Delta y$-$\Delta\phi$ distribution and one dimensional $\Delta\phi$ distribution at long range rapidity gap are enhanced. The enhancements are demonstrated to be the contributions of source gluons. The quantum evolution of the gluons presents unique correlation patterns in differential correlation function. These characters of two gluon correlations open a way of testing the production mechanism from experimental measurements., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures

The high-order cumulants and factorial cumulants of conserved charges are suggested to study the critical dynamics in heavy ion collisions. In this paper, using parametric representation of the 3-dimensional Ising model, the sign distribution on the phase diagram and temperature dependence of the cumulants and factorial cumulants is studied and compared. In the vicinity of the critical point, the cumulants and factorial cumulants can not be distinguished. Far away from the critical point, sign changes occur in the factorial cumulants comparing with the same order cumulants. The cause of these sign changes is analysed. They may be used to measure the distance to the critical point., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures

Using the sample produced by the AMPT default model, we construct a corresponding mixed sample by the method of mixed events. The mixed sample provides an effective estimation for non-critical fluctuations which are caused by global and systematic effects. The dynamical cumulants of conserved charges are defined as the cumulants of the original sample minus the cumulants of the mixed sample. It is demonstrated that dynamical cumulants are subtracted statistical fluctuations, and centrality bin width or detection efficiency independent, in consistent with formulae corrected cumulants. Therefore, dynamical cumulants are helpful in obtaining critical fluctuations at the RHIC BES., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1908.05465

Higher cumulants of conserved charges are sensitive observables of quantum chromodynamics phase transitions. The sample of mixed events provides a background to estimate non-critical effects of cumulants. Four possible methods for constructing the sample of mixed events are suggested. The effectiveness of each method is examined. It is showed that the method of most random or least constrain is the best, rather than the conventional method.

The critical point is a fixed point in finite-size scaling. To quantify the behaviour of such a fixed point, we define, at a given temperature and scaling exponent ratio, the width of scaled observables for different sizes. The minimum of the width reveals the position of fixed point, its corresponding phase transition temperature, and scaling exponent ratio. The value of this ratio tells the nature of fixed point, which can be a critical point, a point of the first order phase transition line, or a point of the crossover region. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this method, we apply it to three typical samples produced by the 3D three-state Potts model. Results show the method to be more precise and effective than conventional methods. Finally, we discuss a possible application at the beam energy scan program of relativistic heavy-Ion collision., Comment: v3: final version. v2: references update. 7 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1805.04311

It is shown that intermittency, a self-similar correlation with respect to the size of the phase space volume, is sensitive to critical density fluctuations of baryon numbers in a system belonging to the three-dimensional (3D) Ising universality class. The relation between intermittency index and relative baryon density fluctuation is obtained. We thus suggest that measuring the intermittency in relativistic heavy-ion collisions could be used as a good probe of density fluctuations associated with the QCD critical phenomena. From recent preliminary results on neutron density fluctuations in central Au + Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7, 11.5, 19.6, 27, 39, 62.4 and 200 GeV at RHIC/STAR, the collision energy dependence of intermittency index is extracted and shows a non-monotonic behavior with a peak at around 20 - 27 GeV, indicating that the strength of intermittency becomes the largest in this energy region. The transport UrQMD model without implementing critical physics cannot describe the observed behavior., Comment: Replaced with the published version

Taking doubly charged particles, positive-negative charge pair production and the effects of volume fluctuations into account, the Poisson baseline of the fluctuations of net-charge is studied. Within the Poisson baseline, the cumulants of net-charge are derived. Comparing to the Skellam baseline of net-charge, we infer that doubly charged particles broaden the distributions of net-charge, while positive-negative charge pairs narrow the distributions. Using the ratios of doubly charged particles and positive-negative charge pairs from neutral resonance decays to the total positive charges from THERMINATOR 2, the first four orders of moments and the corresponding moment products are calculated in the Poisson baseline for Au + Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV at RHIC/STAR. We find that the standard deviation is mainly influenced by the resonance decay, while the third and fourth order moments and corresponding moment products are mainly modified and fit the data of RHIC/STAR much better after including the effects of volume fluctuations., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, to be published by Chinese Physics C

We investigate the azimuthal correlations of the glasma in p-p collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=7$ TeV by using the CGC formalism. As expected, the azimuthal correlations show two peaks at $\Delta\phi=0$ and $\pi$ which represent collimation production in CGC. Beyond that, azimuthal correlations show fine structures, i.e. bumps or shoulders between the two peaks, when at least one gluon has small $x$. The structures are demonstrated to be associated with saturation momentum, and likely appear at transverse momentum around $2Q_{\mathrm{sp}}=1.8$ GeV$/$c., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

We study the sign distribution of generalized magnetic susceptibilities in the temperature-external magnetic field plane using the three-dimensional three-state Potts model. We find that the sign of odd-order susceptibility is opposite in the symmetric (disorder) and broken (order) phases, but that of the even-order one remains positive when it is far away from the phase boundary. When the critical point is approached from the crossover side, negative fourth-order magnetic susceptibility is observable. It is also demonstrated that non-monotonic behavior occurs in the temperature dependence of the generalized susceptibilities of the energy. The finite-size scaling behavior of the specific heat in this model is mainly controlled by the critical exponent of the magnetic susceptibility in the three-dimensional Ising universality class., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

We investigate the measurement of the sixth order cumulant and its ratio to the second order cumulant ($C_6/C_2$) in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The influence of statistics and different methods of centrality bin width correction on $C_6/C_2$ of net-proton multiplicity distributions is demonstrated. There is no satisfactory method to extract $C_6/C_2$ with the current statistics recorded at lower energies by STAR at RHIC. With statistics comparable to the expected statistics at the planned future RHIC Beam Energy Scan II (BES II), no energy dependence of $C_6/C_2$ is observed in central collisions using the UrQMD model. We find if the transition signal is as strong as predicted by the PQM model, then it is hopefully observed at the upcoming RHIC BES II.

Using a multi-phase transport model (AMPT) that includes both initial partonic and hadronic interactions, we study neighboring bin multiplicity correlations as a function of pseudorapidity in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 7.7-62.4$ GeV. It is observed that for $\sqrt{s_{NN}} < $19.6GeV Au+Au collisions, the short-range correlations of final particles have a trough at central pseudorapidity, while for $\sqrt{s_{NN}} > $19.6GeV AuAu collisions, the short-range correlations of final particles have a peak at central pseudorapidity. Our findings indicate that the pseudorapidity dependence of short-range correlations should contain some new physical information, and are not a simple result of the pseudorapidity distribution of final particles. The AMPT results with and without hadronic scattering are compared. It is found that hadron scattering can only increase the short-range correlations to some level, but is not responsible for the different correlation shapes for different energies. Further study shows that the different pseudorapidity dependence of short-range correlations are mainly due to partonic evolution and the following hadronization scheme., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to CPC

We study statistics dependence of the probability distributions and the means of measured moments of conserved quantities, respectively. The required statistics of all interested moments and their products are estimated based on a simple simulation. We also explain why the measured moments are underestimated when the statistics are insufficient.With the statistics at RHIC/BES, the second and third order moments can be reliably obtained based on the method of Centrality bin width correction (CBWC), which can not be applied for the fourth order moments at low energy. With planning statistics at RHIC/BES II, and improved CBWC method, $\kappa\sigma^2$ in a finer centrality bin scale should be measurable. This will help us to understand the current observation of energy and centrality dependence of high-order moments., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures

Through the Monte Carlo simulation of the three-dimensional, three-state Potts model, which is a paradigm of finite-temperature pure gauge QCD, we study the fluctuations of generalized susceptibilities near the temperatures of external fields of first-, second-order phase transitions and crossover. Similar peak-like fluctuation appears in the second order susceptibility at three given external fields. Oscillation-like fluctuation appears in the third and fourth order susceptibilities. We find that these non-monotonic fluctuations are not only associated with the second-order phase transition, but also the first-order one and crossover in a system of finite-size. We further present the finite-size scaling analysis of the second and fourth order susceptibilities, respectively. The exponent of the scaling characterizes the order of the transitions, or the crossover., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures

By the sample generated by the AMPT with string melting model, we compare the azimuthal distributions of multiplicity, total transverse rapidity, and mean transverse rapidity. It is demonstrated that the azimuthal distribution of mean transverse rapidity is a good probe of the radial kinetic expansion. The anisotropic part of the distribution characterizes the anisotropic nature of the radial expansion, and isotropic part is combinations of thermal motion and isotropic radial expansion., Comment: 4pages,7figures

By the generator of the UrQMD model, event statistics for the products of kurtosis ($\kappa$) and variance ($\sigma^2$) of net-proton and net-charge multiplicity distributions are carefully studied. It is shown that the statistics at RHIC/BES below $\sqrt {s_{NN}} < 19.6$ GeV are not sufficient for using the method of Centrality Bin Width Correction (CBWC). Corresponding results are systematically underestimated. A way to improve the CBWC method is proposed. It can remove the statistics dependence of the data and reduce the initial size fluctuation as well., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

The Poisson-liked statistical fluctuations, which are caused by the finite number of produced particles, are firstly estimated for the cumulants of conserved charges, i.e., the cumulants of net-baryon, net-electric charge, and net-strangeness. They turn out to be the same as those baselines derived from Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model. The energy and centrality dependence of net-proton cumulants at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) are demonstrated to be mainly caused by statistical fluctuations. Subtracting the statistical fluctuations, the dynamical kurtosis of net- and total-proton from two versions of the AMPT model and the UrQMD model at current RHIC beam energies are presented. It is found that the observed sign change in the kurtosis of net-proton can not be reproduced by these three transport models. There is no significant difference between net- and total-proton kurtosis in model calculations, in contrary to the data at RHIC., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures

The appearance of the inflection point in the equation of state (EoS) is associated with the second order phase transition. The high cumulants of conserved quantities near the critical point are corresponding to the high derivatives of the EoS near the inflection point. The critical behavior of high cumulants of conserved charge near the QCD critical point, in particular, the sign change, is closely related to the appearance of inflection point. We show in general how the times of sign change of high cumulants relate to the order of derivative. We also demonstrate that the character of inflection point of EoS is as visible as the sign change of high cumulants in 3 systems, i.e., van der Waals equation of fluid, magnetization of spin models and the baryon number density of QCD matter. Therefore, we propose that the EoS, or the mean of baryon number density, should be measured and studied together with its higher cumulants in exploring QCD critical point in heavy ion collisions., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

Based on the universal properties of a critical point in different systems and that the QCD phase transitions fall into the same universality classes as the 3-dimensional Ising, $O(2)$ or $O(4)$ spin models, the critical behavior of cumulants and higher cumulant ratios of the order parameter from the three kinds of spin models is studied. We found that all higher cumulant ratios change dramatically the sign near the critical temperature. The qualitative critical behavior of the same order cumulant ratio is consistent in these three models., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

With the help of AMPT default model, we study the influence of initial size (centrality of collisions) on higher cumulant ratios of net-proton distributions. If the centrality is presented by impact parameter, there is a strong centrality dependent, in particular, in those peripheral collisions. This dependence is slightly reduced if the centrality is presented by number of participant, or charged multiplicity. However, the dynamical ratios are almost centrality independent. So the centrality dependence of dynamical ratios at RHIC beam energy scan are presented., Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures

Collective phenomena from RHIC and LHC experiments indicate a strongly coupled quark gluon plasma. Finite temperature lattice QCD calculations show the interaction measure, $\Delta\equiv(\epsilon-3p)/T^4$, is sizeable over a considerable range of temperatures above the deconfinement temperature, which may also indicate that the plasma is strongly interacting. For the ideal gas with massless particles, the interaction measure is zero. A nonzero value is probably due to either the interaction or the mass. In order to see the contribution of the particle mass to the interaction measure, in this paper we study a system without any interactions, i.e., an ideal gas with massive particles. After assembling the standard formulas of the quantum statistics with relativistic energy, we calculate the energy density, the pressure and the interaction measure. We find that their dependences on temperature reproduce the qualitative features of the lattice result. The interaction measure is nonzero for an ideal gas, which demonstrates that the particle mass contributes to the interaction measure. By our estimate, in the interaction measure obtained by the lattice calculation, quark mass contributes less than (40-50)%. There are sizeable residue interactions in the deconfined phase., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Considering different universality classes of the QCD phase transitions, we perform the Monte Carlo simulations of the 3-dimensional $O(1, 2, 4)$ models at vanishing and non-vanishing external field, respectively. Interesting high cumulants of the order parameter and energy from O(1) (Ising) spin model, and the cumulants of the energy from O(2) and O(4) spin models are presented. The critical features of the cumulants are discussed. They are instructive to the high cumulants of the net baryon number in the QCD phase transitions., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures

We suggest the azimuthal distribution of mean transverse (radial) rapidity of the final state particles as a more direct measure of the transverse motion of the source than the standard azimuthal multiplicity distribution. Using a sample generated by the AMPT model with string melting, we demonstrate that the azimuthal amplitude of the suggested distribution characterizes the anisotropic radial flow, and coincides with the parameter of anisotropic radial rapidity extracted from a generalized blast-wave parametrization., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures