Production of multiply heavy flavored baryons from quark gluon plasma in relativistic heavy ion collisions.
It is argued that in heavy ion collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) there could be a sizable production of baryons containing two or three heavy quarks from statistical coalescence. This production mechanism is peculiar of quark gluon plasma, and the predicted rates, in heavy ion collisions at LHC energies, exceed those from a purely hadronic scenario, particularly for Xi(bc) and Omega(ccc). Thus, in addition to the interest in the discovery of these new states, enhanced ratios of these baryons over singly heavy flavored hadrons, like B or D, in heavy ion collisions with respect to pp at the same energy, would be a clear indication of kinetic equilibration of heavy quarks in the quark gluon plasma.
Becattini
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Università di Firenze and INFN Sezione di Firenze, I-50019 Florence, Italy.