Space-time Autocorrelations and Hubble Flow: Probing Small Length Scales in Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

We extend the usual treatment of two-particle momentum correlations to include the possibility of non-chaotic or correlated particle emission from the hadronic freeze-out surface in heavy-ion collisions. We adopt a modified two-particle emission density which permits the description of nontrivial differences between pair autocorrelations for different pair types. If different pair types sample nuclear radial or Hubble flow in different ways we predict a unique signature in two-particle momentum distributions. Analysis of such effects may provide detailed information on the small-scale structure of the freeze-out surface.