Flavour-Dependent Chemical Freeze-Out of Light Nuclei in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how light nuclei are produced in heavy-ion collisions, proposing a flavour-dependent freeze-out model that better matches experimental data than traditional approaches, indicating different hadron types freeze out at different times.

Contribution

It introduces a flavour-dependent chemical freeze-out framework for light nuclei, improving the description of yield ratios in heavy-ion collision experiments.

Findings

Sequential freeze-out model fits data better than single freeze-out.

Flavour-dependent freeze-out persists at RHIC and LHC energies.

Light nuclei production is influenced by separate freeze-out conditions for different hadrons.

Abstract

We study the production of light nuclei in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 7.7 - 200 GeV and Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 2.76 and 5.02 TeV within a flavour-dependent freeze-out framework, assuming different flavoured hadrons undergo separate chemical freeze-out. Using the Thermal-FIST package, thermal parameters extracted from fits to various sets of hadron yields, including and excluding light nuclei, are used to calculate the ratios of the yields of light nuclei, namely, $d/p$, $\bar{d}/\bar{p}$, $t/p$, and $t/d$. A comparison with data from the STAR and ALICE collaborations shows that a sequential freeze-out scenario provides a better description of light nuclei yield ratios than the traditional single freeze-out approach. These results suggest the flavour-dependent chemical freeze-out for final state light-nuclei production persists in heavy-ion collisions at both RHIC and LHC energies.