An investigation of the antinuclei and nuclei production mechanism in Pb + Pb collisions at 158 A GeV

We investigate the production mechanisms of p, d, t, 3He, 4He, 6Li, , and in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A GeV measured near zero transverse momentum with the NA52 experiment at the CERN SPS. We find evidence that nuclei and antinuclei in Pb+Pb collisions are mainly produced via the coalescence mechanism out of a thermalized source of hadrons, at a time close to the thermal freeze-out of hadrons corresponding to a temperature of ~120 MeV.