Probing the properties of event-by-event distributions in Hanbury-Brown--Twiss radii

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to extract the mean and variance of event-by-event HBT radii distributions in heavy ion collisions, overcoming previous limitations of ensemble-averaged measurements.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach to determine the full distribution of HBT radii from experimental data, including higher moments, using a weighted averaging technique.

Findings

Successfully extracted mean and variance of HBT radii in simulated events.

Demonstrated the method's potential to access higher moments of the distribution.

Provided a framework for more detailed characterization of initial state fluctuations.

Abstract

Hanbury-Brown--Twiss interferometry is a technique which yields effective widths (i.e., "HBT radii") of homogeneity regions in the fireballs produced in heavy ion collisions. Because the initial conditions of these collisions are stochastically fluctuating, the measured HBT radii also exhibit variation on an event-by-event basis. However, HBT measurements have, to date, been performed only on an ensemble-averaged basis, due to inherent limitations of finite particle statistics. In this paper, we show that experimental measurements to date are best characterized theoretically as weighted averages of the event-by-event HBT radii, and we propose a new method for extracting experimentally both the arithmetic mean and the variance of the event-by-event distribution of HBT radii. We demonstrate the extraction of the mean and variance of this distribution for a particular ensemble of numerically generated events, and offer some ideas to extend and generalize the method to enable measurement of higher moments of the HBT distribution as well.