Two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in Pb-Pb collisions at 2.76 TeV with ALICE

Abstract

We present the first measurement of pion source radii in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC. The radii were obtained by analyzing the Bose-Einstein enhancement in two-pion correlation functions. Like at lower energies, the radii drop with increasing transverse momentum, indicating presence of collective expansion. In absolute terms, all three radii (Rout, Rside, Rlong) are larger than at RHIC, roughly consistent with a linear scaling with the cube root of the particle multiplicity.