Beam Energy and Centrality Dependence of Two-Pion Bose-Einstein Correlations at SPS Energies
arXiv:nucl-ex/0207005 · doi:10.1016/S0375-9474(02)01369-6
Abstract
Results are presented of a two-pion interferometry (HBT) analysis in Pb+Au collisions at 40, 80, and 158 AGeV. A detailed study of the Bertsch-Pratt HBT radius parameters has been performed as function of the mean pair transverse momentum $k_t$ and in bins of the centrality of the collision. From these results we extract model dependent information about the space-time evolution of the reaction. An investigation of the effective volume of the pion emitting system provides an important tool to study the properties of thermal pion freeze-out.
24 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Nucl.Phys.A; minor changes as proposed by the referees: two short comments added, figure 6 caption changed, english style reviewed, references updated