Spectra and flow of light nuclei in relativistic heavy ion collisions at energies available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Within the framework of the coalescence model based on the phase-space distributions of protons and neutrons generated from the IEBE-VISHNU hybrid model with AMPT initial conditions, we study the spectra and elliptic flow of deuterons and helium-3 in relativistic heavy ion collisions at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the CERN Larger Hadron Collider (LHC). Results from our model calculations for Au + Au collisions at root S-NN = 200 GeV at RHIC and Pb+Pb collisions at root S-NN = 2.76 TeV at the LHC are compared with available experimental data. Good agreements are generally seen between theoretical results and experimental data, except that the calculated yield of helium-3 in Pb+Pb collisions at root S-NN = 2.76 TeV underestimates the data by about a factor of 2. Possible reasons for these discrepancies are discussed. We also make predictions on the spectra and elliptic flow of deuterons and helium-3 in Pb+Pb collisions at root S-NN = 5.02 TeV that are being studied at LHC.