NPA Seminar: Debora Mroczek, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, "Searching for the QCD critical point with the Beam Energy Scan program at RHIC"
One of the main goals of the Beam Energy Scan (BES) program at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) is to detect signatures of the conjectured QCD critical point. A prediction based on universality arguments suggested that non-monotonic behavior in the fourth-order baryon susceptibility (chi-4) is a critical signature. The net-proton kurtosis, as a function of beam energy, is thought to be a good experimental proxy for chi-4. This discussion became even more relevant after results from the first run of the BES program showed hints of non-monotonic behavior in the net-proton kurtosis.