Correlations induced by quantum statistics are sensitive to the spatio-temporal extent as well as dynamics of particle emitting sources in heavy-ion collisions. In addition, such correlations can be used to search for the presence of a coherent component of pion production. Two and three-pion correlations of same and mixed-charge are measured at low relative momentum to estimate the coherent fraction of charged pions in Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}=2.76$ TeV at the LHC with ALICE. The genuine three-pion quantum statistics correlation is found to be suppressed relative to the two-pion correlation based on the assumption of fully chaotic pion emission. The suppression is observed to decrease with triplet momentum. The observed suppression at low triplet momentum may correspond to a coherent fraction in charged pion emission of 23% $\pm$ 8%.
C2 versus qinv for same-charge pions in six kT intervals. 0-5% centrality.
C2 versus qinv for mixed-charge pions in six kT intervals. 0-5% centrality.
C2 versus qinv for same-charge pions in six kT intervals. 45-50% centrality.
The first measurement of two-pion Bose-Einstein correlations in central Pb-Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76$ TeV at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. We observe a growing trend with energy now not only for the longitudinal and the outward but also for the sideward pion source radius. The pion homogeneity volume and the decoupling time are significantly larger than those measured at RHIC.
Projections of the correlation function C.
Projections of the correlation function C.
Projections of the correlation function C.
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