Probing the (anti-)hypertriton properties with ALICE at the LHC
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The extreme energy densities reached in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC lead to an abundant production of nuclei and antinuclei. Of particular interest among these are the light (anti-)hypernuclei, as the study of their internal structure represents a direct probe to investigate the strong interaction between hyperons and nucleons. This talk is focused on the properties of the lightest known hypernucleus, the hypertriton (3ΛH), which is a bound state of a proton, a neutron and a Λ. The most precise measurements to date of the 3ΛH and anti-3ΛH lifetime τ and Λ separation energy BΛ are obtained using the data sample of Pb-Pb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV collected by ALICE during the Run 2 of the LHC. The 3ΛH is reconstructed via its charged two-body mesonic decay channel (3ΛH→3He+π- + c.c.) and selected with machine learning techniques. The measured values τ = [ 253 ± 11 (stat) ± 6 (syst) ] ps and BΛ = [ 102 ± 63 (stat) ± 67 (syst) ] keV are compatible with predictions from effective field theories and confirm that the3ΛH structure is consistent with an extremely weak bound system.
Refreshments will be served at 10:30
Michelangelo Mangano, Jan Fiete Grosse-Oetringhaus and Pedro Silva