Charge Fluctuations from Cluster Hadronization and the D-puzzle

Event-by-event fl uctuations of electric charge have been proposed as signals of quark-gluon plasma creation in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, but can not be confi rmed in experiments. We apply a quark molecular dynamics model which describes dynamically the transition from a gas of interacting quarks to hadrons via the formation of colour neutral clusters. We fi nd a corresponding change of the fl uctuation measure from the QGP value to the hadron gas value. This vindicates expectations formulated for quark recombination models and speaks in favour of the scenario of recombination as the mechanism of hadronization. Charge fl uctuations as probes of deconfi nement Event-by-event fl uctuations of electric charge in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions,