Abstract
The energy densities reached in high-energy hadronic collisions at the LHC allow significant production of light (anti)nuclei. Their production yields have been measured as a function of pT and charged-particle multiplicity in different collision systems and at different center-of-mass energies by ALICE. One of the most interesting results obtained from such a large variety of experimental data is that the dominant production mechanism of light (anti)nuclei seems to depend solely on the event charged-particle multiplicity. Evidence for this comes from the continuous evolution of the deuteron15 to-proton and 3He-to-proton ratios with the event multiplicity across different collision systems and energies. The characterization of the light nuclei production mechanism is complemented by measurements of their production yields in jets and in the underlying event. In this paper, recent results on light nuclei production in small collision systems are shown and discussed in the context of the statistical hadronization and coalescence models. In addition, recent results on the deuteron production in jets and new preliminary results on its production in the underlying event measured in pp collisions at √S = 13 TeV are discussed.
Highlights
Physics motivationThe production mechanism of light (anti)nuclei is under intense debate in the heavy-ion physics community
The key parameter of the coalescence models is the coalescence parameter BA, which is related to the production probability of the nucleus via this process and can be calculated from the overlap of the nucleus wave function and the phase space distribution of the constituents via the Wigner formalism [4]
In order to further investigate the phenomena underlying the production of light nuclei, it is interesting to study the small system properties by means of new observables, such as the underlying event (UE) activity [12]
Summary
The production mechanism of light (anti)nuclei is under intense debate in the heavy-ion physics community. Hadronization Model (SHM) [1], hadrons are produced by a thermally and chemically equilibrated source and their abundances are fixed at the chemical freeze-out. This model provides a good description of the measured hadron yields in central A–A collisions [2]. The production of light (anti)nuclei can be modelled via the coalescence of protons and neutrons that are close by in phase space at the kinetic freeze-out and match the spin, forming a nucleus [3]. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences
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