Distortion of the HBT images by meson clouds

TL;DR

This paper investigates how meson clouds in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions distort HBT images by analyzing mesonic final state interactions using a semiclassical optical potential approach.

Contribution

It introduces a semiclassical model to quantify the impact of mesonic clouds on HBT interferometry in heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Mesonic clouds cause measurable distortions in HBT images.

Coherent and incoherent scattering effects are significant.

The model helps interpret experimental HBT data more accurately.

Abstract

We study the effects of mesonic final state interactions on the Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) intensity interferometry for mesons in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. Modification of the one-body amplitude of emitted mesons while going through a cloud of other mesons is estimated in the semiclassical approximation with a mesonic optical potential which incorporates both coherent forward scattering with other mesons and the absorption due to the incoherent scattering in the meson clouds. We show how these effects results in the distortion of the HBT images.