The ALICE ( A Large Ion Collider Experiment ) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider ( LHC ) has identified the first evidence of antihyperhelium-4, an exotic hypernucleus composed of antimatter particles and other elements.
The ALICE experiment and its unique approach
This experiment is dedicated to studying extreme states of matter, such as the quark-gluon plasma that existed briefly in the first moments after the Big Bang. In its recent experiments, ALICE has focused on heavy ion collisions, which create ideal conditions for the production of hypernuclei and antimatter. Although hypernuclei are rare, they have been observed at the LHC in sufficient numbers for detailed analysis.
Antihyperhelium-4, composed of two antiprotons, one antineutron and one antilambda, has been identified with a value of 3.5 standard deviations. This discovery is important because it identifies the heaviest antimatter hypernucleus ever detected at the LHC. The researchers used advanced machine learning techniques to analyse data from lead-lead collisions in 2018 at an energy of 5.02 TeV per nucleon pair.
The production of hypernuclei and their antimatter counterparts is fundamental to understanding the formation of hadrons, based on quarks and gluons. In addition, these results contribute to studies on the matter-antimatter asymmetry , an enigma that challenges physicists.
The results obtained in ALICE coincide with the predictions of the statistical model of hadronization, which reinforces the validity of this model in describing the production of nuclei and subatomic particles.
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Source and photo: CERN
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