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Sun, Kai-Jia

Publications and source records attributed to Sun, Kai-Jia.

10 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Unveiling the dynamics of little-bang nucleosynthesis

High-energy nuclear collisions provide a unique site for the synthesis of both nuclei and antinuclei at temperatures of kT ≈ 100 – 150 MeV. In these little bangs of transient collisions, a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) of nearly vanishing viscosity is created, which is believed to have existed in the early universe within the first few microseconds after the Big Bang. Analyses of identified particles produced in these little bangs based on the statistical hadronization model for the QGP have suggested that light (anti)nuclei are produced from the QGP as other hadrons and their abundances are little affected by later hadronic dynamics. Here, we find a strong reduction of the triton yield by about a factor of 1.8 in high-energy heavy-ion collisions based on a kinetic approach that includes the effects of hadronic re-scatterings, particularly that due to pion-catalyzed multi-body reactions. This finding is supported by the latest experimental measurements and thus unveils the important role of hadronic dynamics in the little-bang nucleosynthesis.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Kinetic approach of light-nuclei production in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions

We develop a kinetic approach to the production of light nuclei up to mass number A ≤ 4 in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions by including them as dynamic degrees of freedom. The conversions between nucleons and light nuclei during the collisions are incorporated dynamically via the breakup of light nuclei by a nucleon and their reverse reactions. We also include the Mott effect on light nuclei; i.e., a light nucleus will no longer be bound if the phase-space density of its surrounding nucleons is too large. With this kinetic approach, we obtain a reasonable description of the measured yields of light nuclei in central Au+Au collisions at energies of 0.25⁢A GeV–1.0⁢A GeV by the FOPI Collaboration. Our study also indicates that the observed enhancement of the α-particle yield at low incident energies can be attributed to a weaker Mott effect on the α particle, which makes it more difficult to dissolve in nuclear medium, as a result of its much larger binding energy.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Light nuclei production in a multiphase transport model for relativistic heavy ion collisions

Based on an enhanced multiphase transport (AMPT) model, which gives a good description of proton production with a smooth quark matter to hadronic matter transition in relativistic heavy ion collisions, we study deuteron and triton productions from the coalescence of nucleons at the kinetic freezeout of these collisions. For central Au + Au collisions at center-of-mass energies √s NN from 7.7 GeV to 200 GeV available at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), we find that the yield ratio N t N p /N$^2_d$ of proton, deuteron, and triton is a monotonic function of collision energy. Our study confirms the results from similar studies based on different dynamic model, which have either no phase transition or a crossover transition between the quark-gluon plasma and the hadronic matter, that this yield ratio does not show any nonmonotonic behavior in its collision-energy dependence.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

QCD critical point from the Nambu–Jona-Lasino model with a scalar-vector interaction

We study the critical point in the QCD phase diagram in the Nambu–Jona-Lasino (NJL) model by including a scalar-vector coupled interaction. We find that varying the strength of this interaction, which has no effect on the vacuum properties of QCD, can significantly affect the location of the critical point in the QCD phase diagram, particularly the value of the critical temperature. This provides a convenient way to use the NJL-based transport or hydrodynamic model to extract information about the QCD phase diagram from relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Yield ratio of hypertriton to light nuclei in heavy-ion collisions from = 4.9 GeV to 2.76 TeV *

Abstract We argue that the difference in the yield ratio measured in Au+Au collisions at = 200 GeV and in Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV is mainly owing to the different treatment of the weak decay contribution to the proton yield in the Au+Au collisions at = 200 GeV. We then use the coalescence model to extract from measured the information about the and nucleon density fluctuations at the kinetic freeze-out of heavy-ion collisions. We also show, using available experimental data, that the yield ratio is a more promising observable than for probing the local baryon-strangeness correlation in the produced medium.

Physics↗