Chiral transition in a finite system and possible use of finite size scaling in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Understand

We investigate finite-size effects on the chiral phase diagram of strong interactions within the linear sigma model coupled to quarks.

• We estimate the modification of the pseudocritical transition line and isentropic trajectories for sizes that are representative of the systems created in relativistic heavy ion collision experiments.
• The corrections are clearly non-negligible and might significantly affect signatures of the chiral critical endpoint based on estimates for an infinite system.
• We argue that a finite-size scaling analysis should be tested in the process of data analysis of the Beam Energy Scan program at RHIC and in future experiments at FAIR-GSI, through the use of full scaling plots and a chi-squared method as tools for searching the critical endpoint.