(Anti-)deuteron production in pp collisions at $$\sqrt{s}=13 \ \text {TeV}$$

Abstract

Abstract The study of (anti-)deuteron production in pp collisions has proven to be a powerful tool to investigate the formation mechanism of loosely bound states in high-energy hadronic collisions. In this paper the production of $$\text {(anti-)deuterons}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mtext>(anti-)deuterons</mml:mtext> </mml:math> is studied as a function of the charged particle multiplicity in inelastic pp collisions at $$\sqrt{s}=13$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msqrt> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> </mml:msqrt> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>13</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> TeV using the ALICE experiment. Thanks to the large number of accumulated minimum bias events, it has been possible to measure (anti-)deuteron production in pp collisions up to the same charged particle multiplicity ( $${\mathrm {d} N_{ch}/\mathrm {d} \eta } \sim 26$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>ch</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mi>η</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>26</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) as measured in p–Pb collisions at similar centre-of-mass energies. Within the uncertainties, the deuteron yield in pp collisions resembles the one in p–Pb interactions, suggesting a common formation mechanism behind the production of light nuclei in hadronic interactions. In this context the measurements are compared with the expectations of coalescence and statistical hadronisation models (SHM).