Emission times and opacities from interferometry in non-central Relativistic Nuclear Collisions

Abstract

The nuclear overlap zone in non-central relativistic heavy ion collisions is azimuthally very asymmetric. By varying the angle between the axes of deformation and the transverse direction of the pair momenta, the transverse HBT radii oscillate in a characteristic way. It is shown that these oscillations allow determination of source sizes, deformations as well as the opacity and duration of emission of the source created in any non-central high energy nuclear collisions. The behavior of the physical quantities with centrality of the collisions is discussed --- in particular changes caused by a possible phase transition to a quark-gluon plasma.Comment: Revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev. Letter