Measurement of (anti)deuteron and (anti)proton production in DIS at HERA

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of (anti)deuterons in deep inelastic scattering at HERA, measuring their production rates and comparing them to (anti)protons using the coalescence model.

Contribution

It provides the first measurement of (anti)deuteron production in DIS at HERA and compares yields to (anti)protons, confirming consistency with previous world data.

Findings

(Anti)deuteron production yield is about three orders of magnitude smaller than (anti)proton yield.

Results are consistent with previous measurements in other experiments.

Particle rates are interpreted using the coalescence model.

Abstract

The first observation of (anti)deuterons in deep inelastic scattering at HERA has been made with the ZEUS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 300--318 GeV using an integrated luminosity of 120 pb-1. The measurement was performed in the central rapidity region for transverse momentum per unit of mass in the range 0.3<p_T/M<0.7. The particle rates have been extracted and interpreted in terms of the coalescence model. The (anti)deuteron production yield is smaller than the (anti)proton yield by approximately three orders of magnitude, consistent with the world measurements.