Momentum dependence of light nuclei production in pp, p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the production of light nuclei varies with momentum in high-energy collisions at the LHC, using a nucleon coalescence model to explain experimental observations across different collision systems.

Contribution

The paper derives analytical formulas for the momentum distributions of light nuclei and the coalescence factors, linking them to collision system size and momentum, providing a unified explanation for experimental data.

Findings

Derived formulas for deuteron and helion momentum distributions.

Expressed coalescence factors as functions of system size and momentum.

Successfully explained experimental behaviors of coalescence factors at the LHC.

Abstract

We study the momentum dependence of the production of light nuclei in high energy collisions in the nucleon coalescence/recombination mechanism. We derive formulas of the momentum distributions of deuterons ($d$) and helions ($^3$He). We obtain the analytic expressions of the coalescence factor $B_A$'s ($B_2$ for $d$ and $B_3$ for $^3$He) as functions of the collision system size and the momentum. We apply the deduced results to p-p, p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions to naturally explain the interesting behaviors of $B_A$ observed in experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.