Deuterons and space-momentum correlations in high energy nuclear collisions

Using a microscopic transport model together with a coalescence after-burner, we study the formation of deuterons in Au + Au central collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200 AGeV$. It is found that the deuteron transverse momentum distributions are strongly affected by the nucleon space-momentum correlations, at the moment of freeze-out, which are mostly determined by the number of rescatterings. This feature is useful for studying collision dynamics at ultrarelativistic energies.