Transport Theory and Correlation Measurements: Coming to Terms on Emission Sources

TL;DR

This paper uses transport models and imaging techniques to analyze particle emission sources in heavy-ion collisions, improving the understanding of secondary decay contributions to correlation measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a method to correct BUU transport model sources with a tail function derived from imaging comparisons, enhancing correlation analysis accuracy.

Findings

Corrected source functions reproduce measured correlations.

Comparison of BUU and imaging methods reveals secondary decay effects.

Application to Ar+Sc reactions demonstrates method effectiveness.

Abstract

Two-particle correlations play a pivotal role in understanding the space-time characteristics of particle emission in Heavy-ion collisions. These characteristics are typically represented by a relative emission source and can be obtained using transport model simulations such as the Boltzmann- Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) transport model. In this paper, we utilize the BUU transport model to simulate the p-p source. Subsequently, we integrate this source and the p-p kernel within the KP formula to calculate the correlations. By comparing the correlations obtained from the BUU simulation with those obtained using imaging methods, such as the deblurring method, we aim to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of fast and slow emissions on the measured correlations. Specifically, this comparison is used as a tool to determine a function (tail) that represents the relative distribution of the particle pair from secondary decay emissions. Thus, we correct the BUU source function by incorporating a tail to account for the contribution of secondary decay emissions, which cannot be accurately captured by BUU simulations. Resulting source function reproduces the features in the measured correlations. To illustrate our approach, we examine p-p correlations measured in Ar + Sc reactions at E/A = 80 MeV, considering both momentum-independent and momentum-dependent nuclear equations of state (EOS).