https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/s10050-021-00639-w
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Collision centrality and system size dependences of light nuclei production via dynamical coalescence mechanism
1
Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 201800, Shanghai, China
2
Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Ion-beam Application (MOE), Institute of Modern Physics, Fudan University, 200433, Shanghai, China
3
School of Nuclear Sciences and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China
Received:
20
August
2021
Accepted:
23
November
2021
Published online:
14
December
2021
Light (anti-)nuclei in relativistic heavy-ion collisions are considered to be formed by the coalescence mechanism of (anti-)nucleons in the present work. Using a dynamical phase-space coalescence model coupled with a multi-phase transport (AMPT) model, we explore the formation of light clusters such as deuteron, triton and their anti-particles in different centralities for 
Au + Au collisions at 
GeV. The calculated transverse momentum spectra of protons, deuterons, and tritons are comparable to those of experimental data from the RHIC-STAR collaboration. Both coalescence parameters 
for (anti-)deuteron and 
for triton increase with the transverse momentum as well as the collision centrality, and they are comparable with the measured values in experiments. The effect of system size on the production of light nuclei is also investigated by 
B + B, 
O + O, 
Ca + Ca, and Au + Au systems in central collisions. The results show that yields of light nuclei increase with system size, while the values of coalescence parameters present an opposite trend. It is interesting to see that the system size, as well as the centrality dependence of 
(A = 2, 3), falls into the same group, which further demonstrates production probability of light nuclei is proportional to the size of the fireball. Furthermore, we compare our coalescence results with other models, such as the thermal model and analytic coalescence model, it seems that the description of light nuclei production is consistent with each other.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021
