Abstract
The measurements of particle multiplicity distributions have generated
considerable interest in understanding the fluctuations of conserved quantum
numbers in the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) hadronization regime, in particular
near a possible critical point and near the chemical freeze-out. We report the
measurement of efficiency and centrality bin width corrected cumulant ratios
($C_{2}/C_{1}$, $C_{3}/C_{2}$) of net-$\Lambda$ distributions, in the context
of both strangeness and baryon number conservation, as a function of collision
energy, centrality and rapidity. The results are for Au + Au collisions at five
beam energies ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 19.6, 27, 39, 62.4 and 200 GeV) recorded with
the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR). We compare our results to the Poisson
and negative binomial (NBD) expectations, as well as to Ultra-relativistic
Quantum Molecular Dynamics (UrQMD) and Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model
predictions. Both NBD and Poisson baselines agree with data within the
statistical and systematic uncertainties. The ratios of the measured cumulants
show no features of critical fluctuations. The chemical freeze-out temperatures
extracted from a recent HRG calculation, which was successfully used to
describe the net-proton, net-kaon and net-charge data, indicate $\Lambda$
freeze-out conditions similar to those of kaons. However, large deviations are
found when comparing to temperatures obtained from net-proton fluctuations. The
net-$\Lambda$ cumulants show a weak, but finite, dependence on the rapidity
coverage in the acceptance of the detector, which can be attributed to quantum
number conservation.