Deuterons and space-momentum correlations in high energy nuclear collisions - art. no. 031901

Using a microscopic transport model together with a coalescence afterburner , we study the formation of deuterons in Au+Au central collisions at root s = 200A GeV. It is found that the deuteron transverse momentum distribution s are strongly affected by the nucleon space-momentum correlations, at the moment of freeze-out, which are mostly determined by the number of rescatte rings. This feature is useful for studying collision dynamics at ultrarelat ivistic energies. [S0556-2813(99)50309-9].