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Probing the QCD Phase Diagram with Generalized Quark Susceptibilities Theory of strong interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), and the chiral properties of strongly interacting matter are one of the most interesting open issues of modern physics. A distinctive feature of QCD phase diagram is a possible critical end point, which is hard to detect experimentally due to finite volume and critical slowing down effects. Promising candidates for its characterization are higher moments of particle distributions which depend on higher powers of the correlation length, and thus are more sensitive to criticality. The effect of quantum and thermal fluctuations of these quantities in the phase diagram are addressed within the functional renormalization group in a quark-meson model truncation and compared to mean-field approximations where the meson fluctuations are ignored. |