Phase-space densities and effects of resonance decays in a hydrodynamic approach to heavy ion collisions

Abstract

A method allowing analysis of the overpopulation of phase-space in heavy ion collisions in a model independent way is proposed within the hydrodynamic approach. It makes it possible to extract a chemical potential of thermal pions at freeze out irrespective of the form of freeze-out (isothermal) hypersurface in Minkowski space and transverse flows on it. The contributions of resonance (with masses up to 2 GeV) decays to spectra, interferometry volumes and phase-space densities are calculated and discussed in detail. The estimates of average phase-space densities and chemical potentials of thermal pions are obtained for SPS and RHIC energies. They demonstrate that multibosonic phenomena at those energies might be considered as a correction factor rather than as a significant physical effect. The analysis of the evolution of the pion average phase-space density in chemically frozen hadron systems shows that it is almost constant or slightly increases with time while the particle density and phase-space density at each space point drops down rapidly during the system's expansion. We found that, unlike the particle density, the average phase-space density has no direct link to the freeze-out criterion and final thermodynamic parameters, being connected rather to the initial phase-space density of hadronic matter formed in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions.