Production of light nuclei in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We have measured cross sections for the synthesis of nuclei of mass A\ensuremath{\le}4 in collisions of 14.6A GeV/c $^{28}\mathrm{Si}$ nuclei with targets of Pb, Cu, and Al. The data are measured at close to center-of-mass rapidities, and are unique in their exploration of the centrality dependence of nucleosynthesis. Simple coalescence models that were used to study nucleosynthesis at lower energies are inadequate for the description of our measurements. Our data and improved models are used to extract parameters related to the size of the interaction volume at freeze-out.