Distortion of two-pion interferometry by multipion correlations.

Abstract

Multipion correlations arising from the symmetrization of the n-pion wave function affect the extracted information from two-pion correlation measurements. The influence of multipion correlations on a sample of like-pion pairs can be expressed as a multipion correlation factor, the distribution of which offers good sensitivity to the multipion correlation effect. Analyses of the multipion correlation factor for two Bevalac streamer chamber data samples of 2.1A GeV Ne+Pb and 1.8A GeV Ar+Pb collisions show that the multipion correlation effect in the former sample is greater than in the latter. This result mainly arises from the fact that the pion source for Ne projectiles is smaller than for Ar projectiles. The residual correlations in the reference sample are related to the multipion correlation factor in multipion events, which can be expressed as a residual correlation factor. The influence of multipion correlations on two-pion interferometry analyses arises from the ratio of the residual correlation factor to the multipion correlation factor.