Intensity interferometry of direct photons emitted in Au+Au collisions

Abstract

We calculate the two-body correlation function of direct photons produced in Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Our calculation includes contributions from the early pre-equilibrium phase in which photons are produced via hard parton scatterings as well as radiation of photons from a thermalized Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) and the subsequent expanding hadron gas. We find that high energy photon intensity interferometry provides a faithful probe of the details of the space-time evolution and of the early reaction stages of the system.