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Degree

Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Physics, 2002.

Abstract

During the first year of Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, 130 A·GeV collisions were observed and analyzed in the hopes of finding some signal of a new state of matter. This new state of matter, the quark-gluon plasma or QGP, can be described as a deconfined state of freely interacting quarks and gluons within a certain volume of the collision fireball. Since the lifetime and size of this state are both small (<10 fm) a direct observation is not possible. Instead, many different indirect methods are used in order to extract specific information about the source from the final state particles which are eventually detected. One of these methods, HBT interferometry, provides a means of determining the spatial extent and dynamical properties of the freeze-out region, after which the final-state particles have stopped interacting, by examining correlations between pairs of particles within an event. Two-particle interactions include those caused by the Coulomb and strong nuclear forces, however it is the quantum statistics governing the behavior of identical particles which leads to a relationship between the spatial properties of the source and the momentum correlations between pairs of particles. In this thesis, one of the central assumptions of HBT interferometry is examined, that of the chaoticity of the freeze-out region. Particles emitted from the freeze-out region carry an intrinsic quantum particle production phase, much like the initial phase of an electromagnetic wave. If these phases are random for each outgoing particle, the source is said to be fully chaotic. Using three-particle HBT interferometry, it is possible to obtain a measure of this chaoticity, and in so doing verify the results of two-particle HBT.

Subject Headings

Physics, Nuclear

Keywords

HBT Interferometry; Three Pion Interferometry; Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions; STAR Experiment; Silicon Vertex Tracker

Advisor

Thomas J Humanic

Pages

98p.

Document number: osu1023416690
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1023416690

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