Pion interferometry at RHIC: porobing a thermalized quark-gluon plasma?

We calculate the Gaussian radius parameters of the pion-emitting source in high-energy heavy-ion collisions, assuming a first-order phase transition from a thermalized quark-gluon plasma (QGP) to a gas of hadrons. Such a model leads to a very long-lived dissipative hadronic rescattering phase which dominates the properties of the two-pion correlation functions. The radii are found to depend only weakly on the thermalization time tau(i), the critical temperature Tc (and thus the latent heat), and the specific entropy of the QGP. The model calculations suggest a rapid increase of R(out)/R(side) as a function of KT if a thermalized QGP were formed.

Duke Scholars

Author Steffen A. Bass Physics