Electromagnetic effects on meson production: a new tool for studying the space-time evolution of heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper reviews how electromagnetic effects on charged meson emission in heavy ion collisions can serve as a novel probe for the space-time evolution of the created system, providing estimates of emission times.

Contribution

It introduces electromagnetic effects as a new tool to study the space-time dynamics of heavy ion collisions, with a phenomenological application estimating pion emission time.

Findings

Electromagnetic effects are sensitive to the meson formation zone.

First estimate of pion emission time from EM effects.

Comparison with HBT data supports the method.

Abstract

We review our studies of spectator-induced electromagnetic (EM) effects on the emission of charged mesons in the final state of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions. We argue that these effects offer sensitivity to the distance $d_E$ between the charged meson formation zone at freeze-out and the spectator system. As such, they can serve as an independent, new tool to probe the space-time and longitudinal evolution of the system created in the collision. As a phenomenological application for this tool in the context of resonance production and decay, we obtain a first estimate of the time of pion emission from EM effects. This we compare to existing HBT data.