Fluctuations of pion flow harmonics and HBT correlation functions in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper studies how initial source inhomogeneity affects fluctuations in pion flow harmonics and HBT correlations in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions, proposing a method to probe initial granularity.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach using event-subcollection analysis and a granularity length to connect initial source inhomogeneity with flow and HBT fluctuations.

Findings

Triangular flow fluctuations are sensitive to initial source granularity.

The method can potentially reveal initial inhomogeneity in heavy ion collisions.

Fluctuations of flow harmonics correlate with initial source properties.

Abstract

We investigate the fluctuations of pion elliptic flow, triangular flow, and Hanbury-Brown-Twiss (HBT) correlation functions for the hydrodynamic sources with fluctuating initial conditions in the heavy ion collisions of the Au-Au at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$ GeV and the Pb-Pb at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} =2.76$ TeV. A method based on event-subcollection analysis is used to detect these fluctuations in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. We introduce a granularity length to describe the granular inhomogeneity of the initial sources, and investigate its relationships with the fluctuations of the flow harmonics and HBT correlation functions. Our investigations indicate that the fluctuations of the triangular flow of event subcollections are sensitive to the granularity length of the initial source. This dependence may provide a way to study the granular inhomogeneity of the initial source through the analyses of the fluctuations of triangular flow in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions.