Estimating the Parameters of Bose-Einstein Correlations from the Two-Particle Correlation Function in Multihadronic Final States

TL;DR

This paper addresses the estimation of Bose-Einstein correlation parameters in multiparticle production, highlighting the underestimation of statistical errors by common fitting methods and providing a new approach to accurately construct the covariance matrix.

Contribution

It introduces a method to correctly estimate the covariance matrix for two-particle correlation functions, improving the accuracy of Bose-Einstein correlation parameter estimation.

Findings

Standard binned least squares fit underestimates errors

A new recipe for covariance matrix construction is proposed

Improved accuracy in estimating hadronization region parameters

Abstract

To estimate the strength of the Bose-Einstein correlations and the radius of the hadronization region in multiparticle production, the two-particle correlation functions $R$ for identical pairs is adjusted to a parametric function describing the enhancement at small momentum differences. This is usually done by means of a binned uncorrelated least squares fit. This article demonstrates that this procedure underestimates the statistical errors. A recipe is given to construct from the data the covariance matrix To estimate the strength of the Bose-Einstein correlations and the radius of the hadronization region in multiparticle production, the two-particle correlation functions $R$ for identical pairs is adjusted to a parametric function describing the enhancement at small momentum differences. This is usually done by means of a binned uncorrelated least squares fit. This article demonstrates that this procedure underestimates the statistical errors. A recipe is given to construct from the data the covariance matrix between the bins of the histogram of the two-particle correlation function.