Can the strong interactions between hadrons be determined using femtoscopy?

Abstract

In the last decades, femtoscopic measurements from heavy-ion collisions have become a popular tool to investigate the strong interactions between hadrons. The key observables measured in such experiments are the two-hadron momentum correlations, which depend on the production mechanism of hadron pairs and the final-state interactions. Given the complexity of ultra-relativistic collision experiments, the source term describing the production mechanism can only be modeled phenomenologically based on numerous assumptions. The commonly employed approach for analyzing femtoscopic data relies on the Koonin-Pratt formula, which relates the measured correlation functions with the relative wave function of an outgoing hadron pair and a source term that is assumed to be universal. Here, we critically examine this universality assumption and show that for strongly interacting particles such as nucleons, the interpretation of femtoscopic measurements suffers from a potentially large intrinsic uncertainty. We also comment on the ongoing efforts to explore three-body interactions using this experimental technique.

15 pages, 9 figures, 1 table; version accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (42)

• Modern Theory of Nuclear Forces
• Chiral effective field theory and nuclear forces
• Femtoscopy in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions: Two Decades of Progress
• The two-nucleon system at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order
• Improved chiral nucleon-nucleon potential up to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order
• Nuclear forces from chiral Lagrangians using the method of unitary transformation II: The two-nucleon system
• Semilocal momentum-space regularized chiral two-nucleon potentials up to fifth order
• Subleading contributions to the chiral three-nucleon force I: long-range terms
• Unveiling the strong interaction among hadrons at the LHC
• Nuclear forces in the chiral limit
• Subleading contributions to the chiral three-nucleon force II: Short-range terms and relativistic corrections
• The ALICE experiment: a journey through QCD
• Chiral three-nucleon force at N^4LO I: Longest-range contributions
• Exotic Hadrons from Heavy Ion Collisions
• Few-nucleon systems with state-of-the-art chiral nucleon-nucleon forces
• Study of the strong interaction among hadrons with correlations at the LHC
• Two-pion exchange electromagnetic current in chiral effective field theory using the method of unitary transformation
• Two-nucleon electromagnetic current in chiral effective field theory: one-pion exchange and short-range contributions
• Search for a common baryon source in high-multiplicity pp collisions at the LHC
• Chiral three-nucleon force at N^4LO II: Intermediate-range contributions
• Four-nucleon force in chiral effective field theory
• Nuclear axial current operators to fourth order in chiral effective field theory
• A femtoscopic Correlation Analysis Tool using the Schrödinger equation (CATS)
• Finite-size effect on two-particle production in continuous and discrete spectrum
• Four-nucleon force using the method of unitary transformation
• Nuclear Currents in Chiral Effective Field Theory
• High-accuracy calculation of the deuteron charge and quadrupole form factors in chiral effective field theory
• Precision determination of pion-nucleon coupling constants using effective field theory
• Nuclear electromagnetic currents to fourth order in chiral effective field theory
• Nuclear properties with semilocal momentum-space regularized chiral interactions beyond N2LO
• Isospin-violating nucleon-nucleon forces using the method of unitary transformation
• The $\mathbf{\Lambda p}$ interaction studied via femtoscopy in p + Nb reactions at $\sqrt{{\mathbf{s}}_{\mathbf{NN}}}=3.18\mathbf{GeV}$
• Renormalization of the leading-order chiral nucleon-nucleon interaction and bulk properties of nuclear matter
• Towards the understanding of the genuine three-body interaction for p$-$p$-$p and p$-$p$-\Lambda$
• Exploring the strong interaction of three-body systems at the LHC
• Unitary ambiguity of NN contact interactions and the 3N force
• Effect of the N3LO three-nucleon contact interaction on p-d scattering observables
• Exploring the ${\Sigma }^{+}p$ interaction by measurements of the correlation function
• Three-body forces and Efimov physics in nuclei and atoms
• Subleading contributions to the nuclear scalar isoscalar currents
• Light Nuclei Femtoscopy and Baryon Interactions in 3 GeV Au+Au Collisions at RHIC
• The role of chiral symmetry and the non-ordinary $\kappa /K_0^{\ast }(700)$ nature in ${\pi }^{\pm }{K}_S$ femtoscopic correlations

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Corrections to the Smoothness and On-Shell Approximations in Femtoscopy and Coalescence