Light flavor baryon production from small to large collision systems at ALICE

Abstract

Studies of light hadron and nuclei production are fundamental to characterize the hot and dense fireball created in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions and to investigate hadronisation mechanisms at the LHC. Observables investigated as a function of the charged particle multiplicity in proton-proton and proton-lead collisions have shown features not expected and qualitatively similar to what has been observed in larger size colliding systems. The ALICE experiment, exploiting its excellent tracking and PID capabilities, has performed an extensive and systematic study of strange and non-strange hadrons, short-lived hadron resonances and light (anti-)(hyper-)nuclei. A critical overview of these results will be presented through comparison with the statistical hadronisation model.