Finite size effects on cumulants of the critical mode

Understand

In this work we study the temperature dependence of the equilibrium variance of critical fluctuations near the QCD critical point.

• In particular, we take the finite size of the fireball created in heavy-ion collisions into account and systematically obtain corrections to the leading-order result.
• We find that not only is the variance globally reduced in a finite size system, but for certain combinations of parameters a two-peak structure can develop for temperatures near the critical point.