New test could reveal how atomic nuclei form in particle collisions
Physicists have identified a measurable way to distinguish between two competing theories of how light nuclei are created in extreme collision environments. The finding could resolve a long-standing debate in nuclear physics and improve models used to understand matter under extreme conditions—potentially informing materials science and energy research.
Originaltitel: Confronting the production mechanisms of nuclei with deuteron and proton-triggered balance functions
Abstract In ultra high-energy collisions, nuclei with very low binding energies are not expected to survive the dense and hot final state environment. The traditional view has therefore been that nuclei form via coalescence after the hot environment has dissipated. However, statistical thermal models, where hadrons are produced from a fireball at thermal equilibrium, can describe the relative abundances of light nuclei in pp and heavy-ion collisions at the LHC equally well. In this paper we investigate if balance functions triggered by protons and deuterons can be used to distinguish between the two production mechanisms. The coalescence model is investigated using PYTHIA, while the statistical thermal model is examined using the Thermal FIST package. We find that for both models the same simple relation between proton and deuteron triggered balance functions is applicable. However, there is a striking difference between the two models when the transverse momentum of trigger particles is varied. This dependence offers a promising observable to discriminate between the two models that goes beyond nuclei production. Furthermore, we find that deuteron-meson balance functions vanish identically for both models due to baryon number conservation and isospin symmetry.