Formation of light (anti)nuclei

Abstract

The production mechanism of light nuclei, such as deuteron, helium-3, tritium and their antiparticles, has recently attracted an increased attention from the astroparticle and heavy ion communities. The expected low astrophysical background of light antinulei makes them ideal probes for exotic astrophysical processes, such as dark matter annihilations. At the same time, they can be used to measure two-nucleon correlations and density fluctuations in heavy ion collisions, which may shed light on the QCD phase diagram. Motivated by the importance of light antinuclei in cosmic ray studies, we developed a new coalescence model for light (anti)nuclei that includes both the size of the formation region, which is process dependent, and momentum correlations in a semi-classical picture. We have employed the model as an afterburner to the event generators Pythia 8 and QGSJET II, and find that the model agrees well with experimental data on antideuteron and antihelium-3 production in $e^{+}{e}^{-}$, $pp$, $p$Be and $p$Al collisions at various energies. In this paper, we review this model and update existing fits to experimental data based on new insights.

arXiv comment12 pages, 4 pdf figures. Contribution to Tools for High Energy Physics and Cosmology - TOOLS2020 2-6 Nov. 2020

References in corpus (9)

• Relativistic Hadron-Hadron Collisions in the Ultra-Relativistic Quantum Molecular Dynamics Model (UrQMD)
• Monte Carlo treatment of hadronic interactions in enhanced Pomeron scheme: I. QGSJET-II model
• Coalescence and flow in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions
• Antimatter production in proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies
• The Space-Time Structure of Hadronization in the Lund Model
• Testing coalescence and statistical-thermal production scenarios for (anti-)(hyper-)nuclei and exotic QCD objects at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
• Enhanced anti-deuteron Dark Matter signal and the implications of PAMELA
• Nuclear coalescence from correlation functions
• Prospects of antideuteron detection from dark matter annihilations or decays at AMS-02 and GAPS