PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The relevance of higher order cumulants of net baryon number fluctuations forthe analysis of freeze-out and critical conditions in heavy-ion collisions atLHC and RHIC is addressed. The sign structure of the higher order cumulants inthe vicinity of the chiral crossover temperature might be a sensitive probe andmay allow to elucidate their relation to the QCD phase transition. We calculateratios of generalized quark-number susceptibilities to high orders in threeflavor QCD-like models and investigate their sign structure close to the chiralcrossover line.