Correlation femtoscopy of small systems

TL;DR

This paper re-examines correlation femtoscopy principles for extremely small sources around 1 fm, highlighting the effects of quantum uncertainty on observed scales and correlations in high-energy particle collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism for partially coherent emitters at small scales, extending femtoscopy analysis to sources near the uncertainty limit, and analyzes non-femtoscopic correlations.

Findings

Reduction of interferometry radii for small sources

Suppression of Bose-Einstein correlations due to uncertainty principle

Positive correlation between source size and correlation function intercept

Abstract

The basic principles of the correlation femtoscopy, including its correspondence to the Hanbury Brown and Twiss intensity interferometry, are re-examined. The main subject of the paper is an analysis of the correlation femtoscopy when the source size is as small as the order of the uncertainty limit. It is about 1 fm for the current high energy experiments. Then the standard femtoscopy model of random sources is inapplicable. The uncertainty principle leads to the partial indistinguishability and coherence of closely located emitters that affect the observed femtoscopy scales. In thermal systems the role of corresponding coherent length is taken by the thermal de Broglie wavelength that also defines the size of a single emitter. The formalism of partially coherent phases in the amplitudes of closely located individual emitters is used for the quantitative analysis. The general approach is illustrated analytically for the case of the Gaussian approximation for emitting sources. A reduction of the interferometry radii and a suppression of the Bose-Einstein correlation functions for small sources due to the uncertainty principle are found. There is a positive correlation between the source size and the intercept of the correlation function. The peculiarities of the non-femtoscopic correlations caused by minijets and fluctuations of the initial states of the systems formed in $pp$ and $e^+e^-$ collisions are also analyzed. The factorization property for the contributions of femtoscopic and non-femtoscopic correlations into complete correlation function is observed in numerical calculations in a wide range of the model parameters.