Source Function Determined from HBT Correlations by the Maximum Entropy Principle

Abstract

We study the reconstruction of the source function in space-time directly from the measured HBT correlation function using the Maximum Entropy Principle. We find that the problem is ill-defined without at least one additional theoretical constraint as input. Using the requirement of a finite source lifetime for the latter we find a new Gaussian parametrization of the source function directly in terms of the measured HBT radius parameters and its lifetime, where the latter is a free parameter which is not directly measurable by HBT. We discuss the implications of our results for the remaining freedom in building source models consistent with a given set of measured HBT radius parameters.