Effect of Light Nuclei on Chemical Freeze-out Parameters at RHIC Energies

Abstract

In this study, the chemical freeze-out of hadrons, including light-and strange-flavor particles and light nuclei, produced in Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), was investigated. Using the thermal-FIST thermodynamic statistical model, we analyzed various particle sets: those inclusive of light nuclei, those exclusive to light nuclei, and those solely comprising light nuclei. We determined the chemical freeze-out parameters at $\sqrt{s_\text{NN}}=$ 7.7--200 GeV and four different centralities. A significant finding was the decrease in the chemical freeze-out temperature $T_{\textrm{ch}}$ with light nuclei inclusion, with an even more pronounced reduction when considering light nuclei yields exclusively. This suggests that light nuclei formation occurs at a later stage in the system's evolution at RHIC energies. We present parameterized formulas that describe the energy dependence of $T_{\textrm{ch}}$ and the baryon chemical potential $\mu_B$ for three distinct particle sets in central Au+Au collisions at RHIC energies. Our results reveal at least three distinct $T_{\textrm{ch}}$ at RHIC energies correspond to different freeze-out hypersurfaces: a light-flavor freeze-out temperature of $T_L$ = 150.2$\pm$6 MeV, a strange-flavor freeze-out temperature $T_s$ = 165.1$\pm$2.7 MeV, and a light-nuclei freeze-out temperature $T_{\textrm{ln}}$ = 141.7$\pm$1.4 MeV. Notably, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Pb+Pb 2.76 TeV, the expected lower freeze-out temperature for light nuclei was not observed; instead, the $T_{\textrm{ch}}$ for light nuclei was found to be approximately 10 MeV higher than that for light-flavor hadrons.