Bose-Einstein correlations for Levy stable source distributions

Abstract

The peak of the two-particle Bose-Einstein correlation functions has a very interesting structure. It is often believed to have a multivariate Gaussian form. We show here that for the class of stable distributions, characterized by the index of stability $0 < \alpha \le 2$, the peak has a stretched exponential shape. The Gaussian form corresponds then to the special case of $\alpha = 2$. We give examples for the Bose-Einstein correlation functions for univariate as well as multivariate stable distributions, and check the model against two-particle correlation data.