Speaker
Description
I will discuss how fluctuation measurements at the LHC can probe fractional quark charges at early stages of a heavy-ion collisions as well as possible remnants of chiral criticality. Utilizing a density correlations formalism we incorporate effects of local charge conservation, resonance decays, and hadronization of fractional charges to perform a Bayesian analysis of ALICE experimental data, revealing moderate evidence for the freeze-out of electric charge fluctuations in the QGP. I will then discuss an extension of this framework to higher-order net-proton cumulants, which are expected to be sensitive to remnants of chiral criticality. We calculate canonical baselines due to local baryon conservation and compare the resulting predictions with preliminary LHC data for O--O collisions