Hosted by: Matthew Sievert

Fluctuations of conserved charges are important observables that offer insight into the phase structure of strongly interacting matter. Around critical points, such as the chiral critical endpoint of QCD, higher order cumulants of the relevant quantities show universal behavior. The universal behavior of baryon number cumulants can be studied in effective models that lie in the same universality class as QCD. Such a model is for example the Quark Meson model. In my talk I discuss what one can learn from effective field theory studies of fluctuations and present my results obtained using the Functional Renormalization Group method in the Quark Meson model.