Implications of the unusual structure in the pp correlation from Pb+Pb collisions at 158 AGeV

Abstract

The recent NA49 measurement of two-proton correlation function shows an interesting and unexpected structure at large relative momentum. Applying source imaging techniques to the measurement, we find an unusually steep drop-off in the two-proton source function. We show that the steep drop-off is due to the structure in the correlation and the drop-off cannot be explained using conventional correlation analysis. We suggest possible physics reasons for the unusual source function.