De. Kahana et al., MODELING CLUSTER PRODUCTION AT THE BNL ALTERNATING GRADIENT-SYNCHROTRON, Physical review. C. Nuclear physics, 54(1), 1996, pp. 338-352
Deuteron coalescence, during a relativistic nucleus-nucleus collision,
is carried out in a model incorporating a minimal quantal treatment o
f the formation of the cluster from its individual nucleons by evaluat
ing the overlap of initial cascading nucleon wave packets with the fin
al deuteron wave function. The nucleon wave packet sizes are estimated
dynamically using the coalescing pair's past light-cone history. A pa
rameter free determination of the absolute deuteron yields results, an
d a globally consistent picture of the Si+Au measurements is achieved.
In light of the deuteron's evident fragility, information obtained fr
om this analysis may be useful in establishing freeze-out volumes and
help in heralding the presence of high-density phenomena in a baryon-r
ich environment.