New approach to imaging of two-proton source functions

Abstract

The influence of protons emitted from both fast and slow emission mechanisms in 2-proton correlations measured in heavy ion collisions at intermediate energies is discussed. The size of the fast emitting source is found to be determined mainly by the width of the correlation peak at 20 MeV/c, rather than by its magnitude. To illustrate the new analysis technique, the total momentum dependence of p-p correlations measured in 14N+197Au reactions at E/A=75 MeV is studied with an imaging analysis. The extracted results and the basic ideas behind the proposed analysis technique provide new tools for using particle-partcile correlation measurements as a probe of nuclear reactions.