Coulomb corrections to the three-body correlation function in high-energy heavy ion reactions

Abstract

Starting from an asymptotically correct three-body Coulomb wave-function, we determine the effect of Coulomb final state interaction on the three-particle Bose-Einstein correlation function of similarly charged particles. We numerically estimate that the Riverside approximation is not precise enough to determine the three-body Coulomb correction factor in the correlation function, if the characteristic HBT radius parameter is 5 - 10 fm, which is the range of interest in high-energy heavy ion physics.

Comments: 14 pages, 4 figures