Formation of hypernuclei in relativistic ion, hadron and lepton collisions

Abstract

The study of hypernuclei in violent relativistic collisions of ion and other particle with nuclei open new opportunities for nuclear/particle physics and astrophysics. We review the main processes leading to the production of hypernuclei in these reactions: There are the disintegration of large excited hyper-residues (target- and projectile-like remnants with captured hyperons) and the coalescence of hyperons with other baryons into light clusters. We use the transport, coalescence and statistical models to describe the whole process, and demonstrate the advantages of these reactions. A broad distribution of predicted hypernuclei in masses and isospin allows for investigating properties of the exotic hypernuclei and hypermatter. We point at the abundant production of multi-strange nuclei and moderately excited hypernuclear matter. The realistic estimates of hypernuclei yields in various collisions are presented. Many processes well known in normal reactions, such as evaporation, fission, multifragmentation, and Fermi-break-up are generalized and calculated for the case of excited hypermatter. We suggest also a novel method for investigation of the hyperon binding energies directly from experimental measurements of the hypernuclei yields.