Effects of QCD critical point on light nuclei production

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the QCD critical point influences light nuclei production in heavy-ion collisions, proposing the yield ratio N_tN_p/N_d^2 as a sensitive indicator of critical phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces the nucleon coalescence model to connect the QCD critical point with observable light nuclei yield ratios in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Yield ratio N_tN_p/N_d^2 increases with nucleon density correlation length.

The ratio is sensitive to the QCD critical point effects.

Possible non-monotonic behavior of the ratio with collision energy.

Abstract

Using the nucleon coalescence model, which can naturally take into account the correlations in the nucleon density distribution, we study the effects of QCD critical point on light nuclei production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We find that the yield ratio $N_tN_p/N_d^2$ of proton ($p$), deuteron ($d$) and triton ($t$) increases monotonically with the nucleon density correlation length, which is expected to increase significantly near the critical point in the QCD phase diagram. Our study thus demonstrates that the yield ratio $N_tN_p/N_d^2$ can be used as a sensitive probe of the QCD critical phenomenon. We further discuss the relation between the QCD phase transitions in heavy-ion collisions and the possible non-monotonic behavior of \pdt~in its collision energy dependence.