We calculate the quadratic fluctuations of net baryon number, electric charge and strangeness as well as correlations among these conserved charges in ($2+1$)-flavor lattice QCD at zero chemical potential. Results are obtained using calculations with tree-level improved gauge and the highly improved staggered quark actions with almost physical light and strange quark masses at three different values of the lattice cutoff. Our choice of parameters corresponds to a value of 160 MeV for the lightest pseudoscalar Goldstone mass and a physical value of the kaon mass. The three diagonal charge susceptibilities and the correlations among conserved charges have been extrapolated to the continuum limit in the temperature interval $150\mathrm{MeV}\le T\le 250\mathrm{MeV}$. We compare our results with the hadron resonance gas (HRG) model calculations and find agreement with HRG model results only for temperatures $T\lesssim 150\mathrm{MeV}$. We observe significant deviations in the temperature range $160\mathrm{MeV}\lesssim T\lesssim 170\mathrm{MeV}$ and qualitative differences in the behavior of the three conserved charge sectors. At $T\simeq 160\mathrm{MeV}$ quadratic net baryon number fluctuations in QCD agree with HRG model calculations, while the net electric charge fluctuations in QCD are about 10% smaller and net strangeness fluctuations are about 20% larger. These findings are relevant to the discussion of freeze-out conditions in relativistic heavy ion collisions.

• Received 7 March 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.86.034509