https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-020-00198-6
Regular Article -Theoretical Physics
Production of 
and 
correlation function in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
1
Institute of Physics, Jan Kochanowski University, Ul. Uniwersytecka 7, 25-406, Kielce, Poland
2
National Centre for Nuclear Research, Ul. Pasteura 7, 02-093, Warsaw, Poland
* e-mail: stanislaw.mrowczynski@ncbj.gov.pl
Received:
10
February
2020
Accepted:
14
July
2020
Published online:
28
July
2020
The thermal and coalescence models both describe well yields of light nuclei produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at LHC. We propose to measure the yield of and compare it to that of 
to falsify one of the models. Since the masses of and are almost equal, the yield of is about 5 times bigger than that of in the thermal model because of different numbers of spin states of the two nuclides. Their internal structures are, however, very different: the alpha particle is well bound and compact while is weakly bound and loose. Consequently, the ratio of yields of to is significantly smaller in the coalescence model and it strongly depends on the collision centrality. Since the nuclide is unstable and it decays into 
and p, the yield of can be experimentally obtained through a measurement of the correlation function. The function carries information not only about the yield of but also about the source of and allows one to determine through a source-size measurement whether of is directly emitted from the fireball or it is formed afterwards. We compute the correlation function taking into account the s-wave scattering and Coulomb repulsion together with the resonance interaction responsible for the nuclide. We discuss how to infer information about an origin of from the correlation function, and finally a method to obtain the yield of is proposed.
© The Author(s), 2020
