Longitudinal fluctuations of the fireball density in heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We show that fluctuations of the fireball shape in the longitudinal direction generate nontrivial rapidity correlations that depend not only on the rapidity difference, y_{1} - y_{2}, but also on the rapidity sum, y_{1} + y_{2}. This is explicitly demonstrated in a simple wounded nucleon model, and the general case is also discussed. We show how to extract different components of the fluctuating fireball shape from the measured two-particle rapidity correlation function. The experimental possibility of studying the longitudinal initial conditions in heavy-ion and proton-proton collisions is emphasized.