Snowballs in hell: Light nuclei production in heavy ion collisions

Abstract:  First I briefly overview the motivations of heavy ion collision experiments in general, both at low and high energies: it is mainly about exploring different parts of the phase diagram of nuclear and hadronic matter. Then I continue with the motivations of recent studies of light nuclei production in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions: anti-nuclei in space, and search for the critical point of the strongly-interacting matter. After this I focus on a particular recent development --- the possible solution of the "snowballs in hell" puzzle --- why the nuclei with binding energies of few MeV apparently survive at temperatures of around 155 MeV. Recent simulations using a hydrodynamics + hadronic transport approach, where deuterons are produced and destroyed mainly in pi pn pi d reactions show that deuterons do not really survive. They are rather created and disintegrated with approximately equal rates during certain period of time.