Effects of partial thermalization on HBT interferometry

Abstract

Hydrodynamical models have generally failed to describe interferometry radii measured at RHIC. In order to investigate this ``HBT puzzle'', we carry out a systematic study of HBT radii in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions within a two-dimensional transport model. We compute the transverse radii $R_o$ and $R_s$ as functions of $p_t$ for various values of the Knudsen number, which measures the degree of thermalization in the system. For realistic values of the Knudsen number estimated from $v_2$ data, we obtain $R_o/R_s\simeq 1.2$, much closer to data than standard hydrodynamical results. Femtoscopic observables vary little with the degree of thermalization. Azimuthal oscillations of the radii in non central collisions do not provide a good probe of thermalization.

Proceedings for Quark Matter 2009, Knoxville, TN USA

References in corpus (6)

• Hydrodynamic Models for Heavy Ion Collisions
• Initial condition for hydrodynamics, partonic free streaming, and the uniform description of soft observables at RHIC
• Hydrodynamic description of ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Elliptic flow in transport theory and hydrodynamics
• Does interferometry probe thermalization?
• The Long Slow Death of the HBT Puzzle

Cited by in corpus (1)

• A Summary of Bulk Dynamics from Quark Matter 2009