Effects of QCD critical point on light nuclei production

Abstract

Using the nucleon coalescence model, which can naturally take into account the correlations in the nucleon density distribution, we study the effects of QCD critical point on light nuclei production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We find that the yield ratio NtNp/Nd2 of proton (p), deuteron (d) and triton (t) increases monotonically with the nucleon density correlation length, which is expected to increase significantly near the critical point in the QCD phase diagram. Our study thus demonstrates that the yield ratio NtNp/Nd2 can be used as a sensitive probe of the QCD critical phenomenon. We further discuss the relation between the QCD phase transitions in heavy-ion collisions and the possible non-monotonic behavior of NtNp/Nd2 in its collision energy dependence.