Correlations of conserved charges and QCD phase structure

Correlations of conserved charges,i.e.,the baryon number,electric charge,and strangeness,are calculated at finite temperature and chemical potentials up to the fourth order.The calculations are done ina 2+1 flavor low energy effective theory,in which the quantum and thermal fluctuations are encoded through the evolution of flow equations within the functional renormalization group approach.Strangeness neutrality and a fixed ratio of the electric charge to the baryon number density are implemented throughout the computation.We find that higher-order correlations incorporate more sensitive critical dynamics than the quadratic ones.In addition,a non-monotonic dependence of the fourth-order correlations between the baryon number and strangeness,i.e.,-χ_(31)^(BS)/χ_(2)^(S)and χ_(22)^(BS)/χ_(2)^(S),on the collision energy is also observed.