One-dimensional charged kaon femtoscopy in p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 5.02 TeV

Abstract

The correlations of identical charged kaons were measured in p-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=5.02$ TeV by the ALICE experiment at the LHC. The femtoscopic invariant radii and correlation strengths were extracted from one-dimensional kaon correlation functions and were compared with those obtained in pp and Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV and $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=2.76$ TeV, respectively. The presented results also complement the identical-pion femtoscopic data published by the ALICE collaboration. The extracted radii increase with increasing charged-particle multiplicity and decrease with increasing pair transverse momentum. At comparable multiplicities, the radii measured in p-Pb collisions are found to be close to those observed in pp collisions. The obtained femtoscopic parameters are reproduced by the EPOS 3 hadronic interaction model and disfavor models with large initial size or strong collective expansion at low multiplicities.

23 pages, 7 captioned figures, 3 tables, authors from page 18, published version + fixed bibliography, figures at http://alice-publications.web.cern.ch/node/5201