Cluster production and the chemical freeze-out in expanding hot dense matter

Abstract

We discuss medium effects on light cluster production in the QCD phase diagram by relating Mott transition lines to those for chemical freeze-out. In heavy-ion collisions at highest energies provided by the LHC, light cluster abundances should follow the statistical model because of low baryon densities. Chemical freeze-out in this domain is correlated with the QCD crossover transition. At low energies, in the nuclear fragmentation region, where the freeze-out interferes with the liquid-gas phase transition, self-energy and Pauli blocking effects are important. We demonstrate that at intermediate energies the chemical freeze-out line correlates with the maximum mass fraction of nuclear bound states, in particular $\alpha$ particles. In this domain, the HADES, FAIR and NICA experiments can give new insights.

21 pages, 3 figures, minor revisions in the text and figures 2, 3, references added

References in corpus (14)

• The QCD crossover at finite chemical potential from lattice simulations
• K*(892)${}^0$ and $\Phi$(1020) production in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 2.76 TeV
• 50 Years of Quantum Chromodynamics
• Symmetry energy of dilute warm nuclear matter
• Energy dependence of phi meson production in central Pb+Pb collisions at sqrt(s_nn) = 6 to 17 GeV
• Experimental determination of the symmetry energy of a low density nuclear gas
• Matching Excluded Volume Hadron Resonance Gas Models and Perturbative QCD to Lattice Calculations
• Bose-Einstein condensation of pions in heavy-ion collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies
• Cluster and hyper-cluster production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions within the Parton-Hadron-Quantum-Molecular-Dynamics approach
• Jozso's Legacy: Chemical and Kinetic Freeze-out in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Deuteron yields from LHC: Continuum correlations and in-medium effects
• Second virial coefficients of light nuclear clusters and their chemical freeze-out in nuclear collisions
• Cluster formation near midrapidity -- can the mechanism be identified experimentally?
• Resolution of hyper-triton chemical freeze-out puzzle in high energy nuclear collisions

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Nuclear clustering process in heavy-ion collisions : experimental constraints on the low-temperature region of the QCD phase diagram
• Optimal collision-energy range for realizing macroscopic high-baryon-density matter
• Primordial Black Holes Formation Beyond the Standard Cosmic QCD Transition
• Nonequilibrium Phenomenology of Identified Particle Spectra in Heavy-Ion Collisions at LHC Energies