Transport model study of deuteron production in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Using a blast wave model for the distributions of hadrons produced from hadronization of the quark-gluon plasma in relativistic heavy ion collisions, we have studied deuteron transverse momentum spectrum and elliptic flow in a hadronic transport model that includes the production and annihilation of deuterons as well as their elastic scattering in hadronic matter. The results are compared with those measured by the PHENIX and STAR Collaborations at RHIC as well as with those obtained from the coalescence model based on the phase-space distributions of freeze-out nucleons from the transport model.