Interferometric signatures of the temperature dependence of the specific shear viscosity in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper explores how the temperature dependence of shear viscosity in heavy-ion collisions affects interferometric measurements, providing new observables to better understand the medium's properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates that interferometric signatures, specifically HBT radii and their fluctuations, are sensitive to the temperature dependence of shear viscosity, complementing existing spectral analyses.

Findings

HBT radii are affected by the temperature dependence of shear viscosity.

Event-by-event fluctuations of HBT radii provide additional sensitivity.

Interferometric observables can enhance constraints on $\,\eta/s(T)$.

Abstract

Recent work has shown that a temperature dependence of the shear viscosity to entropy ratio, $\eta/s$, influences the collective flow pattern in heavy-ion collisions in characteristic ways that can be measured by studying hadron transverse momentum spectra and their anisotropies. Here we point out that it also affects the pair momentum dependence of the Hanbury-Brown$-$Twiss (HBT) radii (the source size parameters extracted from two-particle intensity interferometry) and the variance of their event-by-event fluctuations. This observation establishes interferometric signatures as useful observables to complement the constraining power of single-particle spectra on the temperature dependence of $\eta/s$.