Abstract:
We calculate the two-body correlation
function of direct photons produced in
central Au + Au collisions at the
Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider. Our
calculation includes contributions from the
early preequilibrium phase in which photons
are produced via hard parton scatterings as
well as radiation of photons from a
thermalized quark-gluon plasma and the
subsequent expanding hadron gas. We find that
high energy photon interferometry provides a
faithful probe of the details of the
space-time evolution and of the early
reaction stages of the system. ©2004 The
American Physical Society