Skewness and kurtosis of net baryon-number distributions at small values of the baryon chemical potential

We present results for the ratios of mean ($M_B$), variance ($sigma_B^2$), skewness ($S_B)$ and kurtosis ($kappa_B$) of net baryon-number fluctuations obtained in lattice QCD calculations with a physical light to strange quark mass ratio. Using next-to-leading order Taylor expansions in baryon chemical potential we find that qualitative features of these ratios closely resemble the corresponding experimentally measured cumulants ratios of net proton-number fluctuations for beam energies down to $sqrt{s_{_{NN}}} ge 19.6$ GeV. We show that the difference in cumulant ratios for the mean net baryon-number, $M_B/sigma_B^2=chi_1^B(T,mu_B)/chi_2^B(T,mu_B)$ and the normalized skewness, $S_Bsigma_B=chi_3^B(T,mu_B)/chi_2^B(T,mu_B)$, naturally arises in QCD thermodynamics. Moreover, we establish a close relation between skewness and kurtosis ratios, $S_Bsigma_B^3/M_B=chi_3^B(T,mu_B)/chi_1^B(T,mu_B)$ and $kappa_Bsigma_B^2=chi_4^B(T,mu_B)/chi_2^B(T,mu_B)$, valid at small values of the baryon chemical potential.