QCD critical point is a landmark region in the QCD phase diagram outlined by temperature as a function of baryon chemical potential. To the right of this second-order phase transition point, one expects first order quark–hadron phase transition boundary, towards the left a crossover region, top of it lies the quark–gluon plasma phase and below it the hadronic phase. Hence locating the QCD critical point through relativistic heavy-ion collision experiments is an active area of research. Cumulants of conserved quantities in strong interaction, such as net-baryon, net-charge, and net-strangeness, are suggested to be sensitive to the physics of QCD critical point and are therefore useful observables in the study of the phase transition between quark–gluon plasma and hadronic matter. We review the experimental status of the search for the QCD critical point via the measurements of cumulants of net-particle distributions in heavy-ion collisions. We discuss various experimental challenges and associated corrections in such fluctuation measurements. We also comment on the physics implications of the measurements by comparing them with theoretical calculations. This is followed by a discussion on future experiments and measurements related to high baryonic density QCD matter.

QCD 临界点是 QCD 相图中的标志性区域，由温度作为重子化学势的函数勾勒出来。在这个二阶相变点的右侧，人们期望一阶夸克-强子相变边界，向左是一个交叉区域，其顶部是夸克-胶子等离子体相，其下方是强子相。因此，通过相对论重离子碰撞实验定位 QCD 临界点是一个活跃的研究领域。强相互作用中守恒量的累积量，如净重子、净电荷和净奇异性，被认为对 QCD 临界点的物理敏感，因此在研究夸克-胶子等离子体和强子物质。我们通过测量重离子碰撞中净粒子分布的累积量来回顾寻找 QCD 临界点的实验状态。我们讨论了此类波动测量中的各种实验挑战和相关校正。我们还通过将测量结果与理论计算进行比较来评论测量的物理意义。随后讨论了与高重子密度 QCD 物质相关的未来实验和测量。