Deuteron and Antideuteron Coalescence in Heavy-Ion Collisions: Energy Dependence of the Formation Geometry

Abstract

We investigate the collision energy dependence of deuteron and antideuteron emission in the RHIC-BES low- to mid-energy range $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=4.6-200$ GeV where the formation rate of antinuclei compared to nuclei is strongly suppressed. In the coalescence picture, this can be understood as bulk emission for nuclei in contrast to surface emission for antinuclei. By comparison with experimental data on the coalescence parameter $B_2$, we are able to extract the respective source geometries. This interpretation is further supported by results from the UrQMD transport model, and establishes the following picture: At low energies, nucleons freeze out over the total fireball volume, while antinucleons are annihilated inside the nucleon-rich fireball and can only freeze out on its surface. Towards higher energies, this annihilation effect becomes irrelevant (due to the decreasing baryochemical potential) and the system's freeze-out is driven by the mesons. Thus, the nucleon and antinucleon freeze-out distributions become similar with increasing energy.

arXiv comment6 pages, 6 figures, submitted to European Physical Journal A

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Cited by in corpus (9)

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• Coalescence, the thermal model and multi-fragmentation: The energy and volume dependence of light nuclei production in heavy ion collisions
• Energy dependence of light hypernuclei production in heavy-ion collisions from a coalescence and statistical-thermal model perspective
• Deuteron yields from LHC: Continuum correlations and in-medium effects
• Midrapidity cluster formation in heavy-ion collisions
• Examination of background effects on light-nuclei yield ratio in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Modeling (anti)deuteron formation at RHIC with a geometric coalescence model
• Investigating the cluster production mechanism with isospin triggering: Thermal models versus coalescence models
• A Data-Guided Coalescence Model for Light Nuclei and Hypernuclei Production in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=3$--200 GeV