Köln 2025 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 30: Heavy-Ion Collisions and QCD Phases V

HK 30.1: Group Report

Wednesday, March 12, 2025, 15:45–16:15, HS 3 Chemie

Measurement of (anti)hypernuclei production in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC — •Michael Hartung for the ALICE Germany collaboration — Institut für Kernphysik, Goethe Universität Frankfurt

At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, light (anti)hypernuclei are produced abundantly in Pb–Pb collisions. Their study provides further insights on the formation mechanism and the nature of the hyperon-nucleon interaction. The most prominent example is the (anti)hypertriton, which is a bound state of a proton, a neutron and a Λ hyperon. It is often discussed as a bound state of a deuteron and a Λ. The Λ-separation energy is only about a few hundred keV, leading to an object size of about 10 fm. The size has consequences for its probability to be formed in a coalescence process, which is not expected from a statistical-thermal model approach. We will show the latest production measurements in different collision systems and a comparison to the production models. Furthermore, we will present a novel technique for the determination of the object size and the Λ-separation energy. Additionally, we were able to study the production and properties of heavier (anti)hypernuclei, namely A=4 (anti)hypernuclei, which lead to the first evidence of the antihyperhelium-4 ever. The known excited states of the (anti)hyperhydrogen-4 and (anti)hyperhelium-4 enable the measurement of their production, mass and antiparticle-to-particle ratio in the available heavy-ion dataset of the LHC Run 2. Moreover, very first results of our (anti)hypernuclei analyses of the ongoing Run 3 heavy-ion dataset are presented.

Keywords: Hypernuclei; ALICE; LHC