Nucleosynthesis of light nuclei and hypernuclei in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$=3 GeV

TL;DR

This paper analyzes experimental data on nuclei and hypernuclei production in central Au+Au collisions at 3 GeV, using hybrid models to understand yield differences and proposing correlation measurements to detect new hypernuclei.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of hybrid dynamical and statistical models in describing hypernuclei yields and highlights the potential of particle correlations to discover new hypernuclei.

Findings

Models reasonably describe experimental yields.

Differences between nuclei and hypernuclei yields are discussed.

Particle correlations can help detect new hypernuclei.

Abstract

We analyze the experimental data on nuclei and hypernuclei yields recently obtained by the STAR collaboration. The hybrid dynamical and statistical approaches which have been developed previously are able to describe the experimental data reasonably. We discuss the intriguing difference between the yields of normal nuclei and hypernuclei which may be related to the properties of hypermatter at subnuclear densities. Most importantly new (hyper-)nuclei could be detected via particle correlations, and such measurements are relevant to pin down the production mechanism.