Correspondence between Hanbury-Brown–Twiss radii and the emission zone in noncentral heavy ion collisions

In noncentral collisions between ultrarelativistic heavy ions, the freeze-out distribution is anisotropic, and its major longitudinal axis may be tilted away from the beam direction. The shape and orientation of this distribution are particularly interesting, as they provide a snapshot of the evolvi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. C, Nuclear physics Nuclear physics, 2011-07, Vol.84 (1), Article 014908
Main Authors: Mount, E., Graef, G., Mitrovski, M., Bleicher, M., Lisa, M. A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ANISOTROPY
BOSONS
CHARGED PARTICLES
COLLISIONS
DISTRIBUTION
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
EMISSION
ENERGY RANGE
HADRONS
HEAVY ION REACTIONS
HEAVY IONS
IONS
MESONS
NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
NUCLEAR REACTIONS
OSCILLATIONS
PIONS
PSEUDOSCALAR MESONS
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
SPACE-TIME
TRANSPORT THEORY
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Summary:In noncentral collisions between ultrarelativistic heavy ions, the freeze-out distribution is anisotropic, and its major longitudinal axis may be tilted away from the beam direction. The shape and orientation of this distribution are particularly interesting, as they provide a snapshot of the evolving source and reflect the space-time aspect of anisotropic flow. Experimentally, this information is extracted by measuring pion Hanbury-Brown-Twiss (HBT) radii as a function of angle with respect to the reaction plane. The connection between measured radius oscillations and the underlying geometry is necessarily model-dependent; many existing formulas are strictly valid only for Gaussian sources with no collective flow. With a realistic transport model of the collision, which generates flow and non-Gaussian sources, we find that these formulas approximately reflect the anisotropy of the freeze-out distribution.
ISSN:0556-2813
1089-490X
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevC.84.014908