Production of multiply heavy flavoured baryons from Quark Gluon Plasma in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

It is argued that in heavy ion collisions at LHC there could be a sizeable 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 energy, exceed those from a purely hadronic scenario, particularly for Xi_bc and Omega_ccc. Thus, besides the interest in the discovery of these new states, enhanced ratios of these baryons over singly heavy flavoured 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.