https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14776-9
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Deuteron identification via time of flight with LHCb
1
School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
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Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas (CBPF), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
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Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Beijing, China
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School of Physics State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Peking University, Beijing, China
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University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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Institute of Particle Physics, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China
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Consejo Nacional de Rectores (CONARE), San Jose, Costa Rica
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Université Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, IN2P3-LAPP, Annecy, France
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Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS/IN2P3, LPC, Clermont-Ferrand, France
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Université Paris-Saclay, Centre d’Etudes de Saclay (CEA), IRFU, Saclay, Gif-Sur-Yvette, France
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Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS/IN2P3, CPPM, Marseille, France
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Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3, IJCLab, Orsay, France
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Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet, CNRS/IN2P3, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France
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LPNHE, Sorbonne Université, Paris Diderot Sorbonne Paris Cité, CNRS/IN2P3, Paris, France
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I. Physikalisches Institut, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
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Universität Bonn-Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen und Kernphysik, Bonn, Germany
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Fakultät Physik, Technische Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany
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Physikalisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
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Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK), Heidelberg, Germany
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Physikalisches Institut, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
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School of Physics, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
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INFN Sezione di Bari, Bari, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Firenze, Florence, Italy
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INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Frascati, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Genova, Genoa, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Milano, Milan, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Cagliari, Monserrato, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Padova, Padua, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Perugia, Perugia, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
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INFN Sezione di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
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Nikhef National Institute for Subatomic Physics, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Nikhef National Institute for Subatomic Physics and VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Faculty of Physics and Applied Computer Science, AGH-University of Krakow, Cracow, Poland
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Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences, Cracow, Poland
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National Center for Nuclear Research (NCBJ), Warsaw, Poland
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Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Bucharest-Magurele, Romania
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Authors Affiliated with an Institute Formerly Covered by a Cooperation Agreement with CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
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ICCUB, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
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La Salle, Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain
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Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías (IGFAE), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
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Instituto de Fisica Corpuscular, Centro Mixto Universidad de Valencia-CSIC, Valencia, Spain
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European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland
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Institute of Physics, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
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Physik-Institut, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
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NSC Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology (NSC KIPT), Kharkiv, Ukraine
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Institute for Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences (KINR), Kyiv, Ukraine
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School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
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H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
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Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
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STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot, UK
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School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
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School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
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Oliver Lodge Laboratory, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
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Imperial College London, London, UK
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Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
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Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
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University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA
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University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
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Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM, USA
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Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA
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Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile
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School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan University, Changsha City, China
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Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nuclear Science, Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory of Quantum Matter, Institute of Quantum Matter, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
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Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China
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School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
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Henan Normal University, Xinxiang, China
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Departamento de Fisica, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia
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Ruhr Universitaet Bochum, Fakultaet f. Physik und Astronomie, Bochum, Germany
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Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary
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Faculty of Physics, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania
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Van Swinderen Institute, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
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Universiteit Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands
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Tadeusz Kosciuszko Cracow University of Technology, Cracow, Poland
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Universidade da Coruña, A Coruña, Spain
85
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
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Faculty of Physics, Taras Schevchenko University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine
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University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
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Ohio State University, Columbus, USA
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Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil
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Centro Federal de Educacão Tecnológica Celso Suckow da Fonseca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
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Center for High Energy Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
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Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, UCAS, Hangzhou, China
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LIP6, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
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Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Dortmund, Germany
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Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
97
Università di Bari, Bari, Italy
98
Università di Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy
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Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
100
Università di Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
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Università di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
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Università di Genova, Genoa, Italy
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Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy
104
Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
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Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
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Università di Padova, Padua, Italy
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Università di Perugia, Perugia, Italy
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Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy
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Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
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Università della Basilicata, Potenza, Italy
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Università di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
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Università di Siena, Siena, Italy
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Università di Urbino, Urbino, Italy
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Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC), Lima, Peru
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Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain
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CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
a
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Received:
8
August
2025
Accepted:
10
September
2025
Published online:
19
November
2025
Abstract
It is shown that the timing capabilities of the LHCb detector operated during the LHC Run 2 can be used to identify light ion particles with momenta of a few GeV/c. This is achieved by estimating the particle time of flight through a newly developed technique. A dedicated reconstruction procedure and a neural-network-based estimator of the particle speed have been developed to enable deuteron identification by suppressing the abundant background from lighter particles. The performance of the identification procedure is demonstrated in a sample of proton-helium collisions at 
= 110 GeV, where the production of deuteron and triton particles is observed. This novel approach opens the way to study deuteron and antideuteron production for different collision systems at different energy scales, exploiting the rich dataset collected by the LHCb experiment.
A. Brossa Gonzalo.
© CERN for the benefit of the LHCb collaboration 2025
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