Pion Imaging at the AGS

Abstract

Source imaging analysis was performed on two-pion correlations in central Au + Au collisions at beam energies between 2 and 8$A$ GeV. We apply the imaging technique by Brown and Danielewicz, which allows a model-independent extraction of source functions with useful accuracy out to relative pion separations of about 20 fm. We found that extracted source functions have Gaussian shapes. Values of source functions at zero separation are almost constant across the energy range under study. Imaging results are found to be consistent with conventional source parameters obtained from a multidimensional HBT analysis.