Universal off-equilibrium scaling of critical cumulants in the QCD phase diagram

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that non-equilibrium critical cumulants near the QCD critical point follow universal off-equilibrium scaling laws, aiding the search for the QCD critical point in heavy-ion collisions.

Contribution

It applies the Kibble-Zurek framework to describe the dynamics of critical cumulants, revealing universal scaling functions for non-equilibrium QCD critical phenomena.

Findings

Critical cumulants can differ in magnitude and sign from equilibrium predictions.

Universal scaling functions describe critical dynamics in heavy-ion collisions.

The approach provides model-independent guidance for experimental searches.

Abstract

Exploiting the universality between the QCD critical point and the three dimensional Ising model, closed form expressions derived (arXiv:1506.00645 ) for non-equilibrium critical cumulants on the crossover side of the critical point reveal that they can differ both in magnitude and sign from equilibrium expectations. We demonstrate here that key elements of the Kibble-Zurek framework of non-equilibrium phase transitions can be employed to describe the dynamics of these critical cumulants. Our results suggest that observables sensitive to critical dynamics in heavy-ion collisions should be expressible as universal scaling functions, thereby providing powerful model independent guidance in searches for the QCD critical point.