Probing the QCD phase diagram with HBT femtoscopy

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent HBT femtoscopy measurements from RHIC and LHC to explore the QCD phase diagram and infer properties of quark-gluon plasma under extreme conditions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of experimental results using HBT femtoscopy to probe the QCD phase diagram at high energies.

Findings

HBT measurements reveal the space-time evolution of the quark-gluon plasma.

Results suggest a softening of the equation of state near the phase transition.

Experimental data constrains theoretical models of QCD matter.

Abstract

Intensity interferometry originates from the field of radio astronomy on the trace of Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Quincy Twiss. In high energy physics, the phenomena was discovered by Goldhaber, Goldhaber, Lee and Pais. In radio astronomy the method is exceeded by more modern approaches but in high energy physics, the measurements of Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) or Goldhaber-Goldhaber-Lee-Pais (GGLP) type of correlations are important tools to access the spatio-temporal properties of the matter under extreme conditions on subatomic scales. In this paper, I review recent experimental results from energies of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and discuss their possible implication on the equation of state of the QCD matter.