(Anti)(hyper)nuclei production in small collision systems measured with ALICE at the LHC

Abstract

The production mechanism of (anti)nuclei in ultrarelativistic hadronic collisions is under intense debate in the scientific community. The description of the experimental measurements is currently based on two competing phenomenological models: the statistical hadronization model and the coalescence approach. Light (anti)nuclei have been extensively measured in small collision systems, namely pp and p--Pb collisions, with ALICE at the LHC. Recent results on the (anti)deuteron production measured in jets and in the underlying event, and in high-multiplicity pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV are discussed in the context of phenomenological models, as they provide new insights on the nucleosynthesis process.