Three-dimensional femtoscopy for proton pairs in heavy-ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper develops a new three-dimensional femtoscopy analysis method for proton pairs in heavy-ion collisions, addressing previous limitations to one-dimensional analysis for such particles, and validates it with simulated data.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism and experimental techniques for three-dimensional proton-proton femtoscopy, expanding analysis capabilities beyond pions and kaons.

Findings

Validated the new analysis method on simulated data

Demonstrated feasibility of three-dimensional proton femtoscopy

Discussed interpretation caveats of femtoscopic radii

Abstract

Femtoscopy, a technique of measuring the size and the dynamics of the system created in heavy-ion collisions is used extensively in experiments at RHIC, LHC, SPS, and the FAIR/GSI. Analysis for pairs of pions is most common, due to their large abundance in the collisions, as well as well-understood theoretical formalism and advanced experimental methodology. It is usually performed in three dimensions in longitudinally co-moving reference frame of the pair, to maximize the amount of information obtained about the source. Similar three-dimensional analysis has also been performed for charged and neutral kaons. In contrast analyses for all other pair types -- either for pairs of identical protons, or for pairs of non-identical particles are only one-dimensional. The abundance of heavier particles is lower than for pions, while the theoretical formalism for such correlations, as well as practical experimental methodology is limited to one-dimensional case up to now. This work identifies specific challenges arising in the analysis of three-dimensional proton-proton femtoscopy and proposes a theoretical formalism to analyze them, as well as specific experimental methods to extract and fit correlations. A test and validation of these methods is performed on correlations simulated in the LHyquid+Therminator2 model, and demonstrates the feasibility of such analysis. The caveats in the theoretical interpretation of the results are discussed, by comparing the fitted values of femtscopic radii with the true characteristics of the source extracted directly from the model.