Imaging Three Dimensional Two-particle Correlations for Heavy-Ion Reaction Studies

Abstract

We report an extension of the source imaging method for analyzing three-dimensional sources from three-dimensional correlations. Our technique consists of expanding the correlation data and the underlying source function in spherical harmonics and inverting the resulting system of one-dimensional integral equations. With this strategy, we can image the source function quickly, even with the finely binned data sets common in three-dimensional analyses.

Comments: 13 pages, 11 figures, submitted to Physical Review C