Overview of event-by-event analysis of high energy nuclear collisions

TL;DR

This paper reviews the methods and findings of event-by-event analysis in high energy nuclear collisions, focusing on fluctuations related to the quark-gluon plasma phase transition and various experimental probes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of fluctuation measures, challenges in separating dynamical fluctuations, and summarizes experimental results and effects like correlations and jets.

Findings

Fluctuations in multiplicity, momentum, flow, and charge reveal underlying event structures.

Long-range correlations and phenomena like disoriented chiral condensates impact fluctuation signals.

Experimental results support the presence of dynamical fluctuations associated with QGP transition.

Abstract

The event-by-event analysis of high energy nuclear collisions aims at revealing the richness of the underlying event structures and provide unique measures of dynamical fluctuations associated with QGP phase transition. The major challenge in these studies is to separate the dynamical fluctuations from the many other sources which contribute to the measured values. We present the fluctuations in terms of event multiplicity, mean transverse momentum, elliptic flow, source sizes, particle ratios and net charge distributions. In addition, we discuss the effect of long range correlations, disoriented chiral condensates and presence of jets. A brief review of various probes used for fluctuation studies and available experimental results are presented.