Search for the new charmed nucleus $^{4}_{D}{\rm He}$ in heavy ion collisions

Studying charmed nuclei can provide important insight into the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), particularly how charm quark interacts with bulk nuclear matter. There have been substantial interests in investigating the existence of charmed hypernuclei. However, there is no experimental detection of such object to date. We investigated the possibility of a bound state of charmed meson ($D^-$) with a $^{4}He$ by Coulomb interaction. It is well-known that due to the excess mass of +3.5 MeV, $p+D^-\rightarrow n+ D^0$ in strong decay. However, the large binding energy of $\alpha$ and the opposite charge between $D^-$ and $^4He$ prevent the object from strong decay with an energy depletion of $\Delta E=-16.5$ MeV. The radius of such an object can be estimated to be around 10 fm, which is sufficiently bigger than the $\alpha$ core by Coulomb force alone, but small enough to have potentially significant wave function overlap ($10-20\%$) between $D^-$ and $\alpha$ core.

In this presentation, we will present a model study of the production of the charmed nucleus $^4_{D^-}He$ in the forward rapidity region at RHIC top energy and a realistic estimation on the discovery potential utilizing the newly installed STAR forward upgrade in the upcoming RHIC 2023 - 2025 runs.