Investigating the Effect of Magnetic Field on Baryon-Charge Correlations in Pb−Pb Collisions at \(\sqrt{s_\textrm{NN}}\) = 5.02 TeV with ALICE
摘要
Fluctuations and correlations of net-conserved quantities are crucial for studying the QCD phase structure. Recent lattice QCD results show a significant magnetic field (eB) influence on the baryon-charge correlation ratio, \(\chi ^{11}_\textrm{QB}/\chi ^{2}_{\textrm{Q}}\) , suggesting their usefulness in probing the magnetic field in non-central heavy-ion collisions. This article presents centrality dependence of net-charge net-proton correlation, normalized by its value for 0–5% centrality interval, in Pb–Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV with ALICE, considering the net-proton number as proxy of the net-baryon number. Results are compared with the Thermal-FIST model without a magnetic field, which accounts for effects like resonance decays and conservation laws. A non-trivial increase from semicentral to peripheral collisions is observed, which is not captured by the Thermal-FIST model calculations excluding magnetic field effects.