Charged kaon femtoscopic correlations in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV

Abstract

Correlations of two charged identical kaons (${\rm K}^{\rm ch}{\rm K}^{\rm ch}$) are measured in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7$~TeV by the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). One-dimensional ${\rm K}^{\rm ch}{\rm K}^{\rm ch}$ correlation functions are constructed in three multiplicity and four transverse momentum ranges. The ${\rm K}^{\rm ch}{\rm K}^{\rm ch}$ femtoscopic source parameters $R$ and $\lambda$ are extracted. The ${\rm K}^{\rm ch}{\rm K}^{\rm ch}$ correlations show a slight increase of femtoscopic radii with increasing multiplicity and a slight decrease of radii with increasing transverse momentum. These trends are similar to the ones observed for $\pi \pi$ and ${\rm K}^0_{\rm s}{\rm K}^0_{\rm s}$ correlations in pp and heavy-ion collisions. However at high multiplicities, there is an indication that the one-dimensional correlation radii for charged kaons are larger than those for pions in contrast to what was observed in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC.