Particle-particle correlations: Femtoscopy and tools for spectroscopy

Abstract

A review of particle-particle correlation studies at intermediate and medium energies is presented. The main results on space-time access to reaction dynamics are discussed with a look at future perspectives to obtain probes of the density dependence of the symmetry energy.Particle-particle correlations offer tools to study space-time properties in reaction dynamics [1] and certain spectroscopic information about unbound states [2,3]. On one hand the sensitivity to space-time properties of the reaction has led to an extensive use of intensity interferometry in nuclear reactions at both intermediate and relativistic energies [1,4]. On the other hand, if two or more particles can be detected as decay products of a specific unbound state produced during the reaction the measured correlation functions contain spectroscopic information about their parent unbound state. This has recently led to use correlations also as a tool for spectroscopy [2,3,5]. In this respect one can reasonably state that heavy-ion collisions and multi-particle correlations represent a rich laboratory to study nuclear systems.