dc.description.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 highenergy hadronic collisions. In this paper the production of
(anti-)deuterons is studied as a function of the charged particle multiplicity in inelastic pp collisions at √s = 13 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 (dNch/dη ∼ 26) 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). | en |