Nuclei Balance | Testing nuclear coalescence with nuclei-antinucleon / antinuclei-nucleon balance measurements at the Large Hadron Collider

Summary
A hot topic at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the production of anti-nuclei. In ultra high-energy collisions at the LHC, nuclei with very low binding energies are not expected to survive the dense and hot final state environment. This project aims to investigate the nuclei and anti-nuclei production in relativistic hadronic collisions at the LHC to test the microscopic mechanism of their production, which is still under debate. In particular, this project would focus on the first experimental measurement of how quantum numbers (in particular baryon number) of produced deuterons are balanced by other hadrons in proton-proton (pp) collisions. One can in this way experimentally test the coalescence hypothesis of nuclei production, directly by measuring if the proton in the deuteron is balanced by an antiproton exactly the same way as for a free proton. If this is the case, then it indicates that the proton in the deuteron is formed in the same way as a free proton. The idea to perform these measurements is presented in this proposal for the first time and has never been performed before. The same measurements can also be compared with the predictions from the famous PYTHIA8 model whose development and maintenance are centered around the Lund University Theory group. The balance is expected to depend on transverse momentum and could depend on multiplicity as this controls the number of final state interactions. To make the highest precision differential measurements, the analysis will use 13.6 TeV pp collision datasets to be taken in Run 3 (2022-2025) with the recently upgraded ALICE detector that can handle rates that are 10-100 times larger than before the upgrade. The ability to perform the measurements takes advantage of the expertise of the fellow and the supervisor who both have a long association with ALICE collaboration at the LHC and has the necessary expertise and network to carry out the measurements.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101149298
Start date: 01-03-2025
End date: 28-02-2027
Total budget - Public funding: - 222 727,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

A hot topic at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the production of anti-nuclei. In ultra high-energy collisions at the LHC, nuclei with very low binding energies are not expected to survive the dense and hot final state environment. This project aims to investigate the nuclei and anti-nuclei production in relativistic hadronic collisions at the LHC to test the microscopic mechanism of their production, which is still under debate. In particular, this project would focus on the first experimental measurement of how quantum numbers (in particular baryon number) of produced deuterons are balanced by other hadrons in proton-proton (pp) collisions. One can in this way experimentally test the coalescence hypothesis of nuclei production, directly by measuring if the proton in the deuteron is balanced by an antiproton exactly the same way as for a free proton. If this is the case, then it indicates that the proton in the deuteron is formed in the same way as a free proton. The idea to perform these measurements is presented in this proposal for the first time and has never been performed before. The same measurements can also be compared with the predictions from the famous PYTHIA8 model whose development and maintenance are centered around the Lund University Theory group. The balance is expected to depend on transverse momentum and could depend on multiplicity as this controls the number of final state interactions. To make the highest precision differential measurements, the analysis will use 13.6 TeV pp collision datasets to be taken in Run 3 (2022-2025) with the recently upgraded ALICE detector that can handle rates that are 10-100 times larger than before the upgrade. The ability to perform the measurements takes advantage of the expertise of the fellow and the supervisor who both have a long association with ALICE collaboration at the LHC and has the necessary expertise and network to carry out the measurements.

Status

SIGNED

Call topic

HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01-01

Update Date

21-11-2024
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Horizon Europe
HORIZON.1 Excellent Science
HORIZON.1.2 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
HORIZON.1.2.0 Cross-cutting call topics
HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01
HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01-01 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023