Speaker
Description
As an important set of thermodynamic quantities, knowledge of the equation of state over a broad range of temperatures and chemical potentials in the QCD phase diagram is crucial for our understanding of strongly-interacting matter. With the equation of state, important questions about QCD phase structure can begin to be addressed, such as whether there is a critical point in the QCD phase diagram. In addition, to draw meaningful conclusions from experimental data, a theoretical framework is needed to link QCD thermodynamics with the particle spectra and correlations observed in the detectors. In this talk, equations of state from first-principles and effective theories will be discussed in order to understand how QCD thermodynamics is affected by the presence of a critical point. Furthermore, the maximum entropy approach is used to freeze-out the fluctuations in order to make estimates for factorial cumulants of proton multiplicities, assuming thermal equilibrium, for a family of EoS with a 3D Ising-like critical point, varying the microscopic inputs that determine the strength and structure of the critical features. We quantify the effect of the non-universal mapping parameters, and the distance between the critical point and the freeze-out curve, on the factorial cumulants of proton multiplicities measured in experiment.