Kaon and pion femtoscopy at the highest energies available at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in a hydrokinetic model

TL;DR

This paper uses a hydrokinetic model to analyze pion and kaon femtoscopy in central Au+Au collisions at RHIC, reproducing experimental spectra and femtoscopic data to understand the space-time evolution of the quark-gluon plasma.

Contribution

It applies a hydrokinetic approach incorporating hydrodynamics and dynamical decoupling to accurately model particle spectra and femtoscopic measurements at top RHIC energies.

Findings

Successful reproduction of pion and kaon spectra and femtoscopic radii

Comparison of initial energy density profiles from Glauber and CGC models

Observation of approximate m_T-scaling for femtoscopic radii

Abstract

The hydrokinetic approach, that incorporates hydrodynamic expansion of the systems formed in A+A collisions and their dynamical decoupling, is applied to restore the initial conditions and space-time picture of the matter evolution in central Au+Au collisions at the top RHIC energy. The analysis is based on the detailed reproduction of the pion and kaon momentum spectra and femtoscopic data in whole interval of the transverse momenta studied by both STAR and PHENIX collaborations. The fitting procedure utilizes the two parameters: the maximal energy density at supposed thermalization time 1 fm/c and the strength of the pre-thermal flows developed to this time. The quark-gluon plasma and hadronic gas is supposed to be in complete local equilibrium above the chemical freeze-out temperature $T_{ch}$ = 165 MeV with the equation of states (EoS) at high temperatures as in the lattice QCD. Below $T_{ch}$ the EoS in the expanding and gradually decoupling fluid depends on the composition of the hadron-resonance gas at each space-time point and accounts for decays of resonances into the non-equilibrated medium. A good description of the pion and kaon transverse momentum spectra and interferometry radii is reached at both used initial energy density profiles motivated by the Glauber and Color Glass Condensate (CGC) models, however, at different initial energy densities. The discussion as for the approximate pion and kaon $m_T$-scaling for the interferometry radii is based on a comparison of the emission functions for these particles.