The STAR Collaboration2024-08-022024-08-022024The STAR Collaboration. (2024). Collision-energy dependence of deuteron cumulants and proton-deuteron correlations in Au+Au collisions at RHIC. Physics Letters B, 855, 138560. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2024.138560https://hdl.handle.net/1911/117551We report the first measurements of cumulants, up to 4th order, of deuteron number distributions and proton-deuteron correlations in Au+Au collisions recorded by the STAR experiment in phase-I of Beam Energy Scan (BES) program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Deuteron cumulants, their ratios, and proton-deuteron mixed cumulants are presented for different collision centralities covering a range of center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair sNN=7.7 to 200 GeV. It is found that the cumulant ratios at lower collision energies favor a canonical ensemble over a grand canonical ensemble in thermal models. An anti-correlation between proton and deuteron multiplicity is observed across all collision energies and centralities, consistent with the expectation from global baryon number conservation. The UrQMD model coupled with a phase-space coalescence mechanism qualitatively reproduces the collision-energy dependence of cumulant ratios and proton-deuteron correlations.engExcept where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.  Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the terms of the license or beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.Journal article1-s20-S0370269324001187-mainhttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2024.138560