Identified hadron spectra in high-statistics p+p collisions at 158 GeV/c.

The detection of cosmic-ray antinuclei is a potential breakthrough approach for the identification of dark matter. The dominant source of antinuclei in the astrophysical background are proton interactions with the interstellar molecular hydrogen gas. Typically, modelling the production of light antinuclei requires antiproton production cross sections as an input. Hence, antiproton production needs to be measured with high precision. The two most popular models to describe antinuclei production are the coalescence and thermal model, but they are based on different underlying physics. A better understanding of antinuclei production mechanisms is needed, which motivates the effort to analyze large data sets from fixed-target experiments.

This talk presents the preliminary measurements of proton and antiproton spectra using the high-statistics proton-proton data sets from NA61/SHINE. The high-statistics data allows to significantly extend the phase space coverage in rapidity and transverse momentum, as compared to previous results from NA61/SHINE. Moreover, π± and K± spectra were also obtained as a by-product of this analysis. Efforts to measure the deuteron production cross section will also be discussed.