Probing the size and binding energy of the hypertriton in heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper discusses how high-energy heavy ion collisions can improve the measurement of the hypertriton's size and binding energy, which are currently uncertain and vary across experiments.

Contribution

It proposes a method using high-energy heavy ion collisions to more accurately determine the hypertriton's size and binding energy.

Findings

Analysis of electromagnetic response and interaction radius of hypertriton

Potential for higher accuracy in binding energy measurements

Discussion of hypertriton's large matter radius

Abstract

The hypertriton is predicted to have a small binding energy (a weighted average of about 150 keV), consistent with a large matter radius (~ 10 fm), larger than the historical 11Li halo discovered more than 35 years ago. But the reported experimental values of the binding energy of the hypertriton range from 70 to 400 keV. In this work I discuss the electromagnetic response and interaction radius of the hypertriton and how high energy heavy ion collisions (~ 1 - 2 GeV/nucleon) can help achieving a higher accuracy for the determination of its size and binding energy.