Signature of QCD critical point: Anomalous transverse velocity dependence of antiproton-proton ratio

TL;DR

This paper proposes that an anomalous dependence of the antiproton-to-proton ratio on transverse velocity can serve as an experimental signature of the QCD critical point in high energy heavy ion collisions, supported by model calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel observable anomaly in the transverse velocity dependence of the antiproton-to-proton ratio as a signature of the QCD critical point, analyzed through transport and thermal models.

Findings

Identified an anomaly in the $eta_{t}$ dependence of $ar{p}/p$ ratio.

Used UrQMD and THERMINATOR models for analysis.

Proposed this anomaly as a signature of the QCD critical point.

Abstract

We formulate the QCD critical point focusing effect on transverse velocity ($\beta_{t}$) dependence of antiproton to proton ($\bar{p}/p$) ratio, which was recently proposed by Asakawa {\it et al.} as an experimental signature of QCD critical point in high energy heavy ion collisions (HICs). For quantitative analysis, Ultra-relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) transport model and THERMal heavy-IoN generATOR (THERMINATOR) are applied to calculate the corresponding $\beta_{t}$ dependence of $\bar{p}/p$ ratio for three gedanken focused isentropic trajectories with different focusing degree on QCD phase diagram. Finally, we obtained an observable anomaly in $\beta_{t}$ dependence of $\bar{p}/p$ ratio, which can be employed as a signature of QCD critical point.