Dynamical simulation of bound antiproton-nuclear systems and observable signals of cold nuclear compression

TL;DR

This paper models the dynamical response of nuclei to implanted antiprotons using relativistic kinetic equations, showing rapid compression and identifying observable signals like meson spectra indicative of annihilation in a compressed environment.

Contribution

It introduces a relativistic kinetic model to simulate nuclear compression caused by antiprotons and predicts observable signals of such compression during annihilation.

Findings

Compression occurs within 4-10 fm/c

Nucleon spectra are sensitive to annihilation in compressed nuclei

Meson invariant mass distributions reflect the annihilation environment

Abstract

On the basis of the kinetic equation with selfconsistent relativistic mean fields acting on baryons and antibaryons, we study dynamical response of the nucleus to an antiproton implanted in its interior. By solving numerically the time-dependent Vlasov equation, we show that the compressed state is formed on a rather short time scale of about 4-10 fm/c. This justifies the assumption, that the antiproton annihilation may happen in the compressed nuclear environment. The evolution of the nucleus after antiproton annihilation is described by the same kinetic equation including collision terms. We show, that nucleon kinetic energy spectra and the total invariant mass distributions of produced mesons are quite sensitive observables to the antiproton annihilation in the compressed nucleus.