https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-021-00607-4
Regular Article
Enhanced yield ratio of light nuclei in heavy ion collisions with a first-order chiral phase transition
1
Cyclotron Institute and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, 77843, College Station, TX, USA
2
School of Physical Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, 073000, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
3
Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 201210, Shanghai, China
4
Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 201800, Shanghai, China
5
School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Key Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, and Key Laboratory for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (MOE), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200240, Shanghai, China
Received:
16
September
2020
Accepted:
7
October
2021
Published online:
16
November
2021
Using a transport model that includes a first-order chiral phase transition between the partonic and the hadronic matter, we study the development of density fluctuations in the matter produced in heavy ion collisions as it undergoes the phase transition, and their time evolution in later hadronic stage of the collisions. With the production of deuterons and tritons described by the coalescence model from nucleons at kinetic freeze out, we find that the yield ratio 
, where 
, 
, and 
are, respectively, the proton, deuteron, and triton numbers, is enhanced if the evolution trajectory of the produced matter in the QCD phase diagram passes through the spinodal region of a first-order chiral phase transition.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021
