Production of $T^+_{cc}$ in heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates the production and evolution of heavy multiquark states, specifically $T^+_{cc}$, in heavy ion collisions at the LHC, focusing on their initial formation and interactions during the hadron gas phase.

Contribution

It introduces a combined coalescence and effective Lagrangian approach to quantify the production and interaction effects on heavy multiquark states in heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Initial multiplicity of molecules is 100 times larger than tetraquarks.

Interactions in the hadron gas phase reduce molecules and increase tetraquarks by a factor of two.

A significant difference in the abundance of molecules versus tetraquarks persists at freeze-out.

Abstract

We study the production of heavy multiquark states in the heavy ion collisions performed at the LHC. We assume that they are produced at the end of the quark-gluon plasma phase and then interact with light hadrons during the hadron gas phase. We use the coalescence model to compute the initial multiplicities and effective Lagrangians to describe the interactions. We find that the initial multiplicity of molecules is two orders of magnitude larger than that of tetraquarks. The interactions in the hadron gas reduce the number of molecules and increase the number of tetraquarks by a factor two in each case. At kinetic freeze-out, the difference is still very large.