Production of light (anti)nuclei in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV

Abstract

Understanding the production mechanism of light (anti)nuclei is one of the key challenges of nuclear physics and has important consequences for astrophysics, since it provides an input for indirect dark-matter searches in space. In this paper, the latest results about the production of light (anti)nuclei in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV are presented, focusing on the comparison with the predictions of coalescence and thermal models. For the first time, the coalescence parameters $B_2$ for deuterons and $B_3$ for helions are compared with parameter-free theoretical predictions that are directly constrained by the femtoscopic measurement of the source radius in the same event class. A fair description of the data with a Gaussian wave function is observed for both deuteron and helion, supporting the coalescence mechanism for the production of light (anti)nuclei in pp collisions. This method paves the way for future investigations of the internal structure of more complex nuclear clusters, including the hypertriton.

26 pages, 7 captioned figures, 2 tables, authors from page 21, published version, figures at http://alice-publications.web.cern.ch/node/7377

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• The ALICE experiment: a journey through QCD
• Light (anti)nuclei production in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV
• Production of light (anti)nuclei in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=5.02$ TeV
• Enhanced deuteron coalescence probability in jets
• Theoretical investigation of the molecular nature of $D_{s0}^{\ast }(2317)$ and $D_{s1}(2460)$ and the possibility of observing the $D\bar{D}K$ bound state $K_{c\bar{c}}(4180)$ in inclusive $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to c\bar{c}$ collisions
• Cosmic Ray Antihelium from a Strongly Coupled Dark Sector
• Production of light antinuclei in $pp$ collisions by dynamical coalescence and their fluxes in cosmic rays near earth
• Measurement of the low-energy antitriton inelastic cross section
• Kaon-deuteron femtoscopy from unitarized chiral interactions
• Production of loosely-bound hadron molecules from bottomonium decays
• Toward universal coalescence models for antideuteron production
• Measurement of the production of (anti)(hyper)nuclei
• ${}^3$H and ${}^3$He nuclei production in a combined thermal and coalescence framework for heavy-ion collisions in the few-GeV energy regime