Femtoscopy via Levy sources with PHENIX at RHIC

TL;DR

This paper reports on femtoscopic measurements of charged pion correlations in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC, analyzing Levy-shaped source distributions to understand the space-time structure of the particle-emitting source.

Contribution

It introduces a Levy-based analysis of pion correlation functions and provides detailed parameterizations as a function of pair transverse mass in heavy-ion collisions.

Findings

Levy parameters vary with pair transverse mass

Correlation functions are well described by Levy distributions

Physical interpretation of mT dependence discussed

Abstract

Charged pion two-particle correlation functions were measured in 0-30% centrality 200 GeV Au+Au collisions with the PHENIX experiment at RHIC. The measured correlation functions can be statistically well described based on the assumption of Levy-shaped source distributions. In this proceedings paper we present the Levy parameters of the measured correlation functions: correlation strength parameter lambda, Levy index alpha and Levy scale parameter R as a function of pair transverse mass mT, in 31 bins from 228 to 871 MeV, separately for positive and negative pion pairs. We discuss the physical interpretation of the mT dependence of the parameters.