Pion–kaon femtoscopy and the lifetime of the hadronic phase in Pb−Pb collisions at sNN=2.76 TeV

ALICE Collaboration

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Abstract

In this paper, the first femtoscopic analysis of pion–kaon correlations at the LHC is reported. The analysis was performed on the Pb–Pb collision data at sNN=2.76 TeV recorded with the ALICE detector. The non-identical particle correlations probe the spatio-temporal separation between sources of different particle species as well as the average source size of the emitting system. The sizes of the pion and kaon sources increase with centrality, and pions are emitted closer to the centre of the system and/or later than kaons. This is naturally expected in a system with strong radial flow and is qualitatively reproduced by hydrodynamic models. ALICE data on pion–kaon emission asymmetry are consistent with (3+1)-dimensional viscous hydrodynamics coupled to a statistical hadronisation model, resonance propagation, and decay code THERMINATOR 2 calculation, with an additional time delay between 1 and 2 fm/c for kaons. The delay can be interpreted as evidence for a significant hadronic rescattering phase in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC.

Original languageEnglish
Article number136030
JournalPhysics Letters B
Volume813
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 10 2021

Funding

The ALICE Collaboration would like to thank all its engineers and technicians for their invaluable contributions to the construction of the experiment and the CERN accelerator teams for the outstanding performance of the LHC complex. The ALICE Collaboration gratefully acknowledges the resources and support provided by all Grid centres and the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) collaboration. The ALICE Collaboration acknowledges the following funding agencies for their support in building and running the ALICE detector: A. I. Alikhanyan National Science Laboratory (Yerevan Physics Institute) Foundation (ANSL), State Committee of Science and World Federation of Scientists (WFS), Armenia; Austrian Academy of Sciences , Austrian Science Fund (FWF): [M 2467-N36] and Nationalstiftung f\u00FCr Forschung, Technologie und Entwicklung , Austria; Ministry of Communications and High Technologies , National Nuclear Research Center , Azerbaijan; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient\u00EDfico e Tecnol\u00F3gico (CNPq), Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (Finep), Funda\u00E7\u00E3o de Amparo \u00E0 Pesquisa do Estado de S\u00E3o Paulo (FAPESP) and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil; Ministry of Education of China (MOEC), Ministry of Science & Technology of China (MSTC) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), China; Ministry of Science and Education and Croatian Science Foundation , Croatia; Centro de Aplicaciones Tecnol\u00F3gicas y Desarrollo Nuclear (CEADEN), Cubaenerg\u00EDa , Cuba; The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic; The Danish Council for Independent Research Natural Sciences , the Villum Fonden and Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF), Denmark; Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP), Finland; Commissariat \u00E0 l'\u00C9nergie Atomique (CEA) and Institut National de Physique Nucl\u00E9aire et de Physique des Particules (IN2P3) and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France; Bundesministerium f\u00FCr Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) and GSI Helmholtzzentrum f\u00FCr Schwerionenforschung GmbH , Germany; General Secretariat for Research and Technology , Ministry of Education, Research and Religions , Greece; National Research Development and Innovation Office , Hungary; Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India (DAE), Department of Science and Technology, Government of India (DST), University Grants Commission , Government of India (UGC) and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India; Indonesian Institute of Sciences , Indonesia; Centro Fermi - Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche Enrico Fermi and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Italy; Institute for Innovative Science and Technology, Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science (IIST), Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI, Japan; Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnolog\u00EDa (CONACYT), through Fondo de Cooperaci\u00F3n Internacional en Ciencia y Tecnolog\u00EDa (FONCICYT) and Direcci\u00F3n General de Asuntos del Personal Academico (DGAPA), Mexico; Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), Netherlands; The Research Council of Norway , Norway; Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (COMSATS), Pakistan; Pontificia Universidad Cat\u00F3lica del Per\u00FA , Peru; Ministry of Science and Higher Education , National Science Centre and WUT ID-UB , Poland; Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information and National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), Republic of Korea; Ministry of Education and Scientific Research , Institute of Atomic Physics and Ministry of Research and Innovation and Institute of Atomic Physics , Romania; Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation , National Research Centre Kurchatov Institute , Russian Science Foundation and Russian Foundation for Basic Research , Russia; Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic , Slovakia; National Research Foundation of South Africa, South Africa; Swedish Research Council (VR) and Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW), Sweden; European Organization for Nuclear Research , Switzerland; Suranaree University of Technology (SUT), National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSDTA) and Office of the Higher Education Commission under NRU project of Thailand, Thailand; Turkish Atomic Energy Agency (TAEK), Turkey; National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine , Ukraine; Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), United Kingdom; National Science Foundation of the United States of America (NSF) and United States Department of Energy , Office of Nuclear Physics (DOE NP), United States of America.

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