Finite-size effect on two-particle production in continuous and discrete spectrum

Abstract

The formalism allowing one to account for the effect of a finite space-time extent of particle production region is given. Its applications to the lifetime measurement of hadronic atoms produced by a high-energy beam in a thin target, as well as to the femtoscopy techniques widely used to measure space-time characteristics of the production processes, are discussed. Particularly, it is found that the neglect of the finite-size effect on the pionium lifetime measurement in the experiment DIRAC at CERN could lead to the lifetime overestimation comparable with the 10% statistical error. The theoretical systematic errors arising in the calculation of the finite-size effect due to the neglect of non-equal emission times in the pair center-of-mass system, the space-time coherence and the residual charge are shown to be negligible.Comment: LaTeX, 77 pages including 5 tables and 18 figures. Somewhat extended version to be published in Phys. El. Part. At. Nuc