  The cross-over region of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in heavy ion
collisions is influenced by the nearby deconfinement, chiral and baryon
condensation phase transitions. A characteristic signature of the deconfinement
transition in this region can be infered using the flux tube model, which is
dual to the Polyakov loop description and which offers a visual picture of what
happens during the transition. The three-point (anti)vertices of a flux tube
network lead to formation of (anti)baryons upon hadronisation. Since there is
no fundamental interaction associated with the baryon number, correlations in
the baryon number distribution at the last scattering surface directly reflect
the preceding pattern of the flux tube vertices in the QGP. An alternating
pattern of vertices and antivertices would lead to an oscillatory signal in the
two-point baryon number correlations, under the experimental conditions
prevalent in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. The strength of the
oscillations is a measure of the flexibility of the QGP.
