Production of light nuclei at colliders -- coalescence vs. thermal model

Abstract

The production of light nuclei in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is well described by both the thermal model, where light nuclei are in equilibrium with hadrons of all species present in a fireball, and by the coalescence model, where light nuclei are formed due to final-state interactions after the fireball decays. We present and critically discuss the two models and further on we consider two proposals to falsify one of the models. The first proposal is to measure a yield of exotic nuclide ${}^4\mathrm{Li}$ and compare it to that of ${}^4\mathrm{He}$. The ratio of yields of the nuclides is quite different in the thermal and coalescence models. The second proposal is to measure a hadron-deuteron correlation function which carries information whether a deuteron is emitted from a fireball together with all other hadrons, as assumed in the thermal model, or a deuteron is formed only after nucleons are emitted, as in the coalescence model. The $p-{}^3\mathrm{He}$ correlation function is of interest in context of both proposals: it is needed to obtain the yield of ${}^4\mathrm{Li}$ which decays into $p$ and ${}^3\mathrm{He}$, but the correlation function can also tell us about an origin of ${}^3\mathrm{He}$.

24 pages, 5 figures, final version as in the special volume `Strong Correlations in Dense Matter Physics' of the European Physical Journal ST. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2001.11351

References in corpus (5)

• Light $p$-shell nuclei with cluster structures ($4\le A\le 16$) in nuclear matter
• Full distribution of clusters with universal couplings and in-medium effects
• Feeddown contributions from unstable nuclei in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Production of ${}^4\mathrm{Li}$ and $p-{}^3\mathrm{He}$ correlation function in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Coulomb Effects in Femtoscopy

Cited by in corpus (19)

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• Deuteron yields from LHC: Continuum correlations and in-medium effects
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• Measurement of ${}_{\Lambda }^3\mathrm{H}$ production in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV
• Faddeev calculations of low-energy $\Lambda$-deuteron scattering and momentum correlation function
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• Light-nuclei production in heavy-ion collisions within a thermodynamical approach
• Examination of background effects on light-nuclei yield ratio in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Modeling (anti)deuteron formation at RHIC with a geometric coalescence model
• Production characteristics of light nuclei, hypertritons and $\Omega$-hypernuclei in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV
• Accessing the deuteron source with pion-deuteron femtoscopy in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV
• ${}^3$H and ${}^3$He nuclei production in a combined thermal and coalescence framework for heavy-ion collisions in the few-GeV energy regime