05 February 2024 | Kai-Jia Sun, Rui Wang, Che Ming Ko, Yu-Gang Ma, Chun Shen
The article "Unveiling the Dynamics of Little-Bang Nucleosynthesis" explores the synthesis of nuclei and antinuclei in high-energy nuclear collisions, which occur at temperatures of $kT \approx 100 - 150$ MeV. These collisions create a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) with vanishing viscosity, similar to conditions in the early universe. The statistical hadronization model (SHM) suggests that light (anti)nuclei are produced from the QGP and their abundances are minimally affected by subsequent hadronic dynamics. However, the study finds that hadronic re-scatterings, particularly pion-catalyzed multi-body reactions, significantly reduce the triton yield by about a factor of 1.8. This finding is supported by experimental measurements from the STAR Collaboration at RHIC and the ALICE Collaboration at LHC, highlighting the importance of hadronic dynamics in little-bang nucleosynthesis. The research extends the relativistic kinetic equations (RKE) to include dissociation and regeneration processes, providing a detailed description of light nucleus production and confirming the inadequacy of the SHM for understanding triton production. The study also discusses the implications for the energy dependence of light nucleus yields and the role of pion-catalyzed reactions in the dynamics of little-bang nucleosynthesis.The article "Unveiling the Dynamics of Little-Bang Nucleosynthesis" explores the synthesis of nuclei and antinuclei in high-energy nuclear collisions, which occur at temperatures of $kT \approx 100 - 150$ MeV. These collisions create a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) with vanishing viscosity, similar to conditions in the early universe. The statistical hadronization model (SHM) suggests that light (anti)nuclei are produced from the QGP and their abundances are minimally affected by subsequent hadronic dynamics. However, the study finds that hadronic re-scatterings, particularly pion-catalyzed multi-body reactions, significantly reduce the triton yield by about a factor of 1.8. This finding is supported by experimental measurements from the STAR Collaboration at RHIC and the ALICE Collaboration at LHC, highlighting the importance of hadronic dynamics in little-bang nucleosynthesis. The research extends the relativistic kinetic equations (RKE) to include dissociation and regeneration processes, providing a detailed description of light nucleus production and confirming the inadequacy of the SHM for understanding triton production. The study also discusses the implications for the energy dependence of light nucleus yields and the role of pion-catalyzed reactions in the dynamics of little-bang nucleosynthesis.