Measurements of higher-order cumulants of multiplicity and net-electric charge distributions in inelastic proton–proton interactions by NA61/SHINE

Abstract

This paper presents the energy dependence of multiplicity and net-electric charge fluctuations in p+p interactions at beam momenta 20, 31, 40, 80, and 158 $\text{Ge}\text{V}/c$. Results are corrected for the experimental biases and quantified with the use of cumulants and factorial cumulants. Cumulant ratios are an essential tool in the search for the critical point of strongly interacting matter in heavy ion collisions. Measurements performed in p+p interactions provide a vital baseline estimation in these studies. The measured signals are compared with the string hadronic models Epos1.99 and FTFP-BERT.