Universal Non-Equilibrium Cascade in QGP Light-Nuclei Formation and Cosmological Bose-Einstein Condensation

TL;DR

This paper reveals a universal non-equilibrium cascade mechanism underlying light-nuclei formation in quark-gluon plasma and Bose-Einstein condensation in cosmology, highlighting a common emergent phenomenon in both fields.

Contribution

It introduces a unified framework connecting non-equilibrium processes in heavy-ion collisions and early universe cosmology, demonstrating their shared cascade dynamics.

Findings

Light nuclei formation involves a multi-stage non-equilibrium process.

Universal cascade dynamics are observed in both QGP and cosmological BEC scenarios.

The mechanism links high-energy modes to low-energy coherent structures.

Abstract

Recent ALICE results demonstrate that over 90\% of light nuclei and anti-nuclei ($d$, $\bar d$) observed in heavy-ion collisions originate from a non-equilibrium, multi-stage process: $\Delta$-resonance production, decay into correlated nucleons, and their subsequent coalescence in a cooler hadronic environment. Although the final particle yields appear thermal, the underlying dynamics is strongly time-ordered and highly non-equilibrium. We show that this mechanism exhibits a striking universality with the formation of Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) and associated density spikes in cosmological scalar-field dark-matter scenarios. In both systems -- the quark-gluon plasma near hadronization and the early universe approaching the BEC critical temperature -- the relevant degrees of freedom reorganize through a hierarchical cascade: high-energy modes first convert into intermediate excitations, which then seed low-energy coherent structures once the temperature crosses a threshold. This work highlights an unexpected theoretical bridge between heavy-ion physics and cosmology, suggesting a common class of emergent non-equilibrium phenomena behind structure formation in both extremes.