Eur. Phys. J. C (2017) 77: 210
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4771-3

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Impact of resonance decays on critical point signals in net-proton fluctuations

¹ Department of Physics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA
² SUBATECH, UMR 6457, Université de Nantes, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, IN2P3/CNRS, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44307, Nantes Cedex 3, France
³ Department of Physics, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA

^* e-mail: mbluhm@ncsu.edu

Received: 8 January 2017
Accepted: 19 March 2017
Published online: 3 April 2017

Abstract

The non-monotonic beam energy dependence of the higher cumulants of net-proton fluctuations is a widely studied signature of the conjectured presence of a critical point in the QCD phase diagram. In this work we study the effect of resonance decays on critical fluctuations. We show that resonance effects reduce the signatures of critical fluctuations, but that for reasonable parameter choices critical effects in the net-proton cumulants survive. The relative role of resonance decays has a weak dependence on the order of the cumulants studied with a slightly stronger suppression of critical effects for higher-order cumulants.