Directed Flow of Protons and Deuterons in Xe + Cs(I) Collisions at 3.8A GeV at the BM@N Experiment

Collisions of relativistic heavy ions result in the formation of a large number of light nuclei, especially at high baryon densities near the collision energy of several A GeV. These light nuclei carry information about how nucleons interact and affect the properties of the collision system. In this work, we present first results on the directed flow $${{v}_{1}}$$ of protons and deuterons in 10–30% central Xe + Cs(I) collisions at a kinetic energy $${{E}_{{{\\text{kin}}}}} = 3.8A$$ GeV, as measured by the BM@N experiment at NICA during the first physics run in 2023. These results are compared with the existing world data and tested for approximate scaling with atomic mass number.