Partonic effects on pion interferometry at the relativistic heavy-ion collider

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Oct 7;89(15):152301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.152301. Epub 2002 Sep 20.

Abstract

Using a multiphase transport model that includes both initial partonic and final hadronic interactions, we study the pion interferometry at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider. We find that the two-pion correlation function is sensitive to the magnitude of the parton-scattering cross section, which controls the parton density at which the transition from the partonic to hadronic matter occurs. Also, the emission source of pions is non-Gaussian, leading to source radii that can be more than twice larger than the radius parameters extracted from a Gaussian fit to the correlation function.