  We investigate the dynamics of the critical isoscalar condensate, formed
during heavy-ion collisions. Our analysis is based on a simplified model where
the sigma and the pions are the only degrees of freedom. In field description,
both in physical and momentum space, we find that the freeze-out profile
presents a structure which reveals clear traces of the critical fluctuations in
the sigma-component. In particle representation, using Monte-Carlo simulations
and factorial moment analysis, we show that signatures of the initial
criticality survive at the detected pions. We propose the distribution of
suitably defined intermittency indices, incorporating dynamical effects due to
sigma-pion interaction, as the basic observable for the exploration of critical
fluctuations in heavy-ion collision experiments.
