Bose-Einstein condensation of pions in heavy-ion collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential formation of Bose-Einstein condensates of pions in high-energy heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, using a thermal model and freeze-out analysis, suggesting about 5% of pions could condense.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized thermal model including zero-momentum states and applies it to LHC data to estimate pion condensation.

Findings

Approximately 5% of pions may form a Bose-Einstein condensate.

The model successfully describes hadron multiplicities and spectra.

The approach provides new insights into pion behavior at high energies.

Abstract

We analyse in detail the possibility of Bose-Einstein condensation of pions produced in heavy-ion collisions at the beam energy $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 2.76 TeV. Our approach is based on the chemical non-equilibrium thermal model of hadron production which has been generalised to include separately the contribution from the local zero-momentum state. In order to study both the hadronic multiplicities and the transverse-momentum spectra, we use the Cracow freeze-out model which parameterises the flow and space-time geometry of the system at freeze-out in a very economic way. Our analysis indicates that about 5% of all pions may form the Bose-Einstein condensate.