Meson Interferometry and the Quest for Quark-Gluon Matter

Abstract

We point out what we may learn from the investigation of identical two-particle interferometry in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions if we assume a particular model scenario by the formation of a thermalized quark-gluon plasma hadronizing via a first-order phase transition to an interacting hadron gas. The bulk properties of the two-pion correlation functions are dominated by these late and soft resonance gas rescattering processes. %that diminish and alter even qualitatively the dependencies %on the QCD equation of state. However, we show that kaons at large transverse momenta have several advantages and a bigger sensitivity to the QCD phase transition parameters.