Production of Light Nuclei and Hypernuclei in Heavy-Ion Collisions

Abstract

We review recent STAR and ALICE measurements of light-nucleus and hypernucleus yields, femtoscopic correlations, and collective flow presented at SQM 2026. Statistical-hadronization calculations provide a useful baseline for integrated yields but do not simultaneously describe all measured light-nucleus ratios across collision energies and system sizes. For bound states with mass number $A<4$, current coalescence calculations provide a broadly consistent description of yields, femtoscopic correlations, and collective flow, although the quantitative hypertriton comparison depends on the assumed few-body wave function. The suppressed production of resonant $^{4}$Li relative to compact $^{4}$He indicates an effect of nuclear structure and late-stage dynamics. However, the quantitative model comparison also depends on the treatment of feed-down from unstable states. In high-multiplicity $p$+$p$ collisions, pion-deuteron femtoscopy further indicates that most observed (anti)deuterons are formed through nucleon fusion after strong decays of short-lived resonances. Taken together, these measurements show that production chronology and internal nuclear structure leave measurable imprints on the physics observables.