Deuteron production in AuAu collisions at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msqrt><mml:msub><mml:mi>s</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mi>N</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>7</mml:mn><mml:mo>–</mml:mo><mml:mn>200</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math> GeV via pion catalysis
Dmytro Oliinychenko, Chun Shen, Volker Koch
Abstract
We study deuteron production using no-coalescence hydrodynamic $+$ transport simulations of central AuAu collisions at $\sqrt{{s}_{NN}}=7--200$ GeV. Deuterons are sampled thermally at the transition from hydrodynamics to transport and interact in transport dominantly via $\ensuremath{\pi}pn\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}\ensuremath{\pi}d$ reactions. The measured proton, lambda, and deuteron transverse momentum spectra and yields are reproduced well for all collision energies considered. We further provide a possible explanation for the measured minimum in the energy dependence of the coalescence parameter ${B}_{2}(\sqrt{{s}_{NN}})$ as well as for the difference between ${B}_{2}(d)$ for deuterons and that for antideuterons, ${B}_{2}(\overline{d})$.