Hbt Analysis of Anisotropic Transverse Flow

Abstract

The effects of anisotropic transverse collective flow on the HBT correlation function is studied. There exist three different physics contributions related to flow which affect the correlation function: anisotropic source shape, anisotropic space-momentum correlations in pion emission, and the effects related to the HBT measurement of the size of a moving source in different reference frames. Resolution of these contributions experimentally can lead to a detailed understanding of both collective flow in nucleus-nucleus collisions and the HBT technique itself. A method is presented which permits the derivation of model independent relations between the radius of a source measured in a frame in which it is moving and in its rest frame.