Multipion correlations induced by isospin conservation of coherent emission

TL;DR

This paper investigates how isospin conservation affects multipion correlations in heavy-ion collisions, revealing correlations between oppositely charged pions that influence Bose-Einstein correlation measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel calculation of multipion correlations considering isospin conservation, extending the coherent emission formalism to charged pions in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Isospin conservation induces correlations between oppositely charged pions.

The calculated correlations align with LHC data on multipion Bose-Einstein suppression.

The work explains the observed suppression through isospin effects in coherent pion emission.

Abstract

Recent measurements have revealed a significant suppression of multipion Bose-Einstein correlations in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC. The suppression may be explained by postulating coherent pion emission. Typically, the suppression of Bose-Einstein correlations due to coherence is taken into account with the coherent state formalism in quantum optics. However, since charged pion correlations are most often measured, the additional constraint of isospin conservation, which is absent in quantum optics, needs to be taken into account. As a consequence, correlations emerge between pions of opposite charge. A calculation of the correlations induced by isospin conservation of coherent emission is made for two, three- and four-pion correlation functions and compared to the data from the LHC.