Evaluation of the hyperon binding energy via statistical production of hypernuclei

TL;DR

This paper proposes a universal statistical method to evaluate hyperon binding energies from hypernuclei production yields in high-energy nuclear reactions, enabling measurements of multi-strange nuclei that were previously challenging.

Contribution

It introduces a double ratio method for extracting hyperon binding energies from hypernuclear yields, applicable to a wide range of isotopes and multi-strange nuclei.

Findings

Hyperon binding energies can be inferred from isotope yields.

The double ratio method is effective and universal.

Applicable to multi-strange hypernuclei with previously difficult measurements.

Abstract

In nuclear reactions of high energy one can simultaneously produce a lot of hypernuclei after the capture of hyperons by nuclear residues. We consider statistical disintegration of such hypernuclear systems and the connection of fragment production with the binding energies of hyperons. It is demonstrated that the hyperon binding energies can be effectively evaluated from the yields of different isotopes of hypernuclei. The double ratio method is suggested for this purpose. The advantage of this procedure is its universality and the possibility to involve many different isotopes. This method can also be applied for multi-strange nuclei, which binding energies were very difficult to measure in previous hypernuclear experiments.