Free Meson Seminars

Little Bang Nucleosynthesis

by Prof. Sourendu Gupta (TIFR)

Thursday, August 2, 2018 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at AG69
Description
Light nuclei are produced in heavy-ion collisions. Since the hadronic system freezes out at very high temperature, nucleosynthesis in the fireball is very different from that in the early universe or in stars. I examine the process of synthesis of deuterium, and show that the different situations can be handled in slightly different effective theories. I show that the yields and spectra of deuterium nuclei are obtained by naturalness criteria imposed on the effective theory. I further argue that understanding some details of deuteron production give us very stringent criteria about thermalization of baryons in the fireball, and therefore have consequences for the search for the QCD critical point.