Dynamical Properties of Heavy-Ion Collisions from the Photon-Photon Intensity Correlations

Abstract

We consider here the bremsstrahlung emission of photons at low and intermediate energies $ E_{lab}\le 1000 MeV/u$ of the projectile. and derive expressions more general than previous results obtained by Neuhauser which were limited to the case of isotropic systems. We find that the two-photon correlation function strongly depends not only on the space-time properties of the collision region but also on the dynamics of the proton-neutron scattering process in nuclear matter. As a consequence of polarisation correlations it turns out that for a purely chaotic source the intercept of the correlation function of photons can reach the value $3$ (as compared with the maximum value $2$ for isotropic systems). Furthermore even for ``hard" photons ($E_{\gamma} > 25 MeV$) the maximum of the correlation function can reach the value of $2$ in contrast with the value of $1.5$ derived by Neuhauser for this case. The formulae obtained in this paper which include also the possible presence of a coherent component can be used as a basis for a systematic analysis of photon intensity-interferometry experiments.