https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-15082-0
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Thermo-coalescence model for light nuclei production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
1
Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, 700064, Kolkata, India
2
Homi Bhabha National Institute, 400094, Mumbai, India
3
School of Physical Sciences, National Institute of Science Education and Research, 752050, Jatni, Odisha, India
4
Department of Physical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Berhampur, Laudigam, 760003, Ganjam, Odisha, India
5
Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, 141980, Dubna, Moscow region, Russian Federation
6
Department of Physics, University of Calcutta, 92, A. P. C. Road, 700009, Kolkata, India
Received:
6
August
2025
Accepted:
14
November
2025
Published online:
26
November
2025
We employ a hybrid approach to describe the light nuclei production mechanism where the nucleons are assumed to be thermally produced, and are allowed to form light nuclei using a coalescence prescription. In this approach, we first fit transverse momentum (
) distribution of nucleons using hydro-inspired boost-invariant Blast-wave model. The extracted parameters are then used to describe the deuteron spectra, along with two additional parameters that characterize the coalescence prescription employed in this study. We refer this combined approach as “thermo-coalescence model” and it is designed to study the deuteron production and describe the experimental measurements. In this work, we analyze the measured distribution of protons and deuterons from Pb–Pb collisions at the ALICE Collaboration at the LHC. We also evaluate the -integrated deuteron yields using this approach and compare with experimental measurements. A Bayesian inference framework is employed to determine the best-fit parameters of the thermo-coalescence model. Finally, we estimate the traditionally used experimental coalescence parameter (
) within our framework in order to establish a connection between our model and the conventional coalescence approach commonly used to relate experimental data with theoretical descriptions of light nuclei production.
© The Author(s) 2025
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Funded by SCOAP3.
