Search for the QCD critical point in nuclear collisions at<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>158</mml:mn><mml:mi>A</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math> GeV at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS)

Pion production in nuclear collisions at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is investigated with the aim to search, in a restricted domain of the phase diagram, for power laws in the behavior of correlations that are compatible with critical QCD. We analyzed interactions of nuclei of different sizes (p+p, C+C, Si+Si, Pb+Pb) at 158A GeV adopting, as appropriate observables, scaled factorial moments in a search for intermittent fluctuations in...