(Anti-)deuteron production and anisotropic flow measured with ALICE at the LHC

Abstract

The high abundance of (anti-)deuterons in the statistics gathered in Run 1 of the LHC and the excellent performance of the ALICE setup allow for the simultaneous measurement of the elliptic flow and the deuteron production rates with a large transverse momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) reach. The (anti-) deuterons are identified using the specific energy loss in the time projection chamber and the velocity information in the time-of-flight detector. The elliptic flow of (anti-)deuterons can provide insight into the production mechanisms of particles in heavy-ion collisions. Quark coalescence is one of the approaches to describe the elliptic flow of hadrons, while the production of light nuclei can be also depicted as a coalescence of nucleons. In these proceedings, the measured $v_{2}$ of deuterons produced in Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$=2.76TeV will be compared to expectations from coalescence and hydrodynamic models.