Speaker
Description
Ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) create a deconfined state of strongly interacting matter known as the quark–gluon plasma (QGP). One of the main questions in high-energy nuclear physics is how colored quarks and gluons emerging from the QGP evolve into the hadrons and nuclear bound states observed in the final stage of the collision. In this context, both heavy-flavor hadrons and light nuclei provide unique and complementary probes of the hadronization process in QCD matter. In this talk, recent LHC results on heavy flavor and light nuclei production in pp, p–Pb, and Pb–Pb collisions will be reviewed from the perspective of hadronization in strongly interacting QCD matter. Connections between quark coalescence, collective expansion, and the emergence of bound states will be discussed, together with future prospects enabled by detector upgrades and the upcoming ALICE 3 experiment at the LHC.