Production of light hypernuclei with light-ion beams and targets

Ion-ion collisions at relativistic energies have been shown recently to be a promising technique for the production of hypernuclei. In this article, we further investigate the production of light Λ hypernuclei by use of a hybrid dynamical model: cascade coalescence followed by Fermi breakup. The predictions are then compared with the available experimental data. The dependence of the production cross section on the beam energy, beam mass number, as well as different projectile-target combinations is investigated. In particular, we evaluate the yields and signal-over-background ratio in the invariant-mass spectrum for carbon projectiles impinging on hydrogen and carbon targets and various coincidence conditions in the experiment using the theoretical calculation as an input. It is found that, comparing with the carbon target, the hydrogen target also leads to sizable hypernuclear yields, even for exotic species, and the hydrogen target could improve significantly the signal-over-background ratio in some hypernuclear invariant mass studies.