Searching for the Critical Point of Strongly Interacting Matter in Nucleus–Nucleus Collisions at CERN SPS

Abstract

The search for experimental signatures of the critical point (CP) of strongly interacting matter is one of the main objectives of the NA61/SHINE experiment at CERN SPS. In the course of the experiment, a beam momentum and system size scan is performed. Local proton density fluctuations in transverse momentum space represent an order parameter of the chiral phase transition and are expected to scale according to a universal power-law in the vicinity of the CP; we probe their behavior through an intermittency analysis of the proton second scaled factorial moments (SSFMs) in transverse momentum space. Previous such analyses revealed power-law behavior in NA49 Si+Si collisions at 158$A$ GeV/$c$, with no intermittency observed in lighter or heavier NA49 & NA61/SHINE systems at the same energy. We now extend the analysis to NA61/SHINE Ar+Sc collisions at 150$A$ GeV/$c$, similar in size and baryochemical potential to NA49 Si+Si. We employ statistical techniques to subtract non-critical background and estimate statistical and systematic uncertainties. Subsequently, we use Monte Carlo simulations to assess the statistical significance of the observed intermittency effect.