Abstract
We present a detailed measurement of charged two-pion correlation functions in 0-30% centrality sNN=200 GeV Au+Au collisions by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The data are well described by Bose-Einstein correlation functions stemming from Lévy-stable source distributions. Using a fine transverse momentum binning, we extract the correlation strength parameter λ, the Lévy index of stability α, and the Lévy length scale parameter R as a function of average transverse mass of the pair mT. We find that the positively and the negatively charged pion pairs yield consistent results, and their correlation functions are represented, within uncertainties, by the same Lévy-stable source functions. The λ(mT) measurements indicate a decrease of the strength of the correlations at low mT. The Lévy length scale parameter R(mT) decreases with increasing mT, following a hydrodynamically predicted type of scaling behavior. The values of the Lévy index of stability α are found to be significantly lower than the Gaussian case of α=2, but also significantly larger than the conjectured value that may characterize the critical point of a second-order quark-hadron phase transition.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 064911 |
| Journal | Physical Review C |
| Volume | 97 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 14 2018 |
Funding
We thank the staff of the Collider-Accelerator and Physics Departments at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the staff of the other PHENIX participating institutions for their vital contributions. We also thank S. Hegyi for enlightening discussions. We acknowledge support from the Office of Nuclear Physics in the Office of Science of the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, Abilene Christian University Research Council, Research Foundation of SUNY, and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Vanderbilt University (USA); Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Japan); Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient\u00EDfico e Tecnol\u00F3gico and Funda\u00E7\u00E3o de Amparo \u00E0 Pesquisa do Estado de S\u00E3o Paulo (Brazil); Natural Science Foundation of China (People's Republic of China); Croatian Science Foundation and Ministry of Science and Education (Croatia); Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (Czech Republic); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Commissariat \u00E0 l'\u00C9nergie Atomique, and Institut National de Physique Nucl\u00E9aire et de Physique des Particules (France); Bundesministerium f\u00FCr Bildung und Forschung, Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Germany); J. Bolyai Research Scholarship, EFOP, the New National Excellence Program (\u00DANKP), NKFIH, and OTKA (Hungary); Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology (India); Israel Science Foundation (Israel); Basic Science Research Program through NRF of the Ministry of Education (Korea); Physics Department, Lahore University of Management Sciences (Pakistan); Ministry of Education and Science, Russian Academy of Sciences, Federal Agency of Atomic Energy (Russia); VR and Wallenberg Foundation (Sweden); the US Civilian Research and Development Foundation for the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union; the Hungarian American Enterprise Scholarship Fund; the US-Hungarian Fulbright Foundation; and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.