# Coulomb distortion of 𝜋⁺/𝜋⁻ as a tool to determine the fireball radius in central high energy heavy ion collisionsSupport received in part by CONACyT México under grant I27212-E, by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant NSF PHY94-21309 and by the U.S. Department of Energy under grants DE-FG02-87ER40328, DE-AC0376SF00098 and DE-FG03-93ER40792.

## Abstract

We compute the Coulomb distortion produced by an expanding and highly charged fireball on the spectra of low transverse momenta and mid rapidity pions produced in central high energy heavy ion collisions. We compare to data on Au+Au at $`11.6A`$ GeV from E866 at the BNL AGS and of Pb+Pb at $`158A`$ GeV from NA44 at the CERN SPS. We match the fireball expansion velocity with the average transverse momentum of protons and find a best fit to the charged pion ratio when the fireball radius is about 10 fm at freeze-out. This value is common to both AGS and SPS data.

An important feature to account for in the analysis of the spectra of secondaries produced in the collision of heavy systems is the presence of a large amount of electric charge. Due to the long-range nature of the electromagnetic interaction, the spectrum of charged particles will be distorted even after freeze-out. For central collisions, this Coulomb effect can be more significant when there is strong stopping and the participant charge in the central rapidity region is an important fraction of the initial charge.

Another feature to consider is that the field-producing charge distribution is in general not static but rather participates in the dynamics responsible for matter expansion after the collision. The combined role played by Coulomb distortions and expansion in the description of charged particle spectra has been the subject of some recent work. Koch  and Barz, Bondorf, Gaardho$`/`$je and Heiselberg  have developed approximate models to describe the situation in which expansion takes place predominantly along the collision axis. In this work, we focus on the description of Coulomb effects on pion spectra from a spherically symmetric expanding source. We compare our calculation to mid-rapidity pions produced in central Au+Au reactions at $`11.6A`$ GeV from E866 at the BNL AGS and in central Pb+Pb reactions at $`158A`$ GeV from NA44 at the CERN SPS. A detailed analysis can be found in Refs. .

Before proceeding on to the model calculation, let us say a few words about the assumption of spherical symmetry. It has been known for some time that the momentum distributions of secondaries are somewhat forward-backward peaked, specially at the SPS, even for central collisions , and this observation can cast some doubt about the validity of a model that assumes a spherically symmetric fireball. However, spherical geometry is not essential to the basic physics and can be relaxed at the expense of additional computing time. Nevertheless, let us provide the following arguments in favor of its use. First, we will be comparing with the transverse momentum distributions at mid-rapidity where the impact of spherical asymmetry should be less important than near the fragmentation regions. Second, pion interferometry of central Au+Au collisions at the AGS  and of central Pb+Pb collisions at the SPS  both yield comparable values for the transverse and longitudinal radii at the time of pion freeze-out. These radii are about twice the radius of a cold gold or lead nucleus. Third, as we will later see, the transverse surface of the fireball needs to expand with a speed more than 90% that of light in order to reproduce the average proton transverse momentum. Since the longitudinal surface of the fireball cannot travel faster than the speed of light, this means that in velocity space the fireball is nearly symmetric. These phenomena, although not yet measured at that time, were already known to Landau . The essential insight from his model is not the degree of stopping but rather the point that significant transverse expansion sets in after the longitudinal and transverse radii become comparable in magnitude. Thereafter, from the point of view of a distant observer, the expansion is not as asymmetric as one might originally think. This model was later developed by others, including Cooper, Frye and Schonberg .

A uniformly charged sphere which has a total charge $`Ze`$ and whose radius $`R`$ increases linearly with time $`t`$ from a value $`R_0`$ at time $`t_0`$ at a constant surface speed $`v_s`$ produces an electric potential

$`V(r,t)=\{\begin{array}{cc}Ze/4\pi r,\hfill & rR=v_st\hfill \\ Ze(3R^2r^2)/8\pi R^3,\hfill & rR=v_st\hfill \end{array}.`$ (3)   
In the center-of-mass frame of the fireball the charge moves radially outwards, hence there is no preferred direction and consequently the magnetic field produced by this moving charge configuration vanishes. The fireball parameters are related by $`R_0=v_st_0`$. If $`f^\pm (𝐫,𝐩,t)`$ represents the $`\pm e`$ test particle phase space distribution then, when ignoring particle collisions after decoupling, its dynamics is governed by Vlasov’s equation.

$`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{𝐩}{E_p}}_r\pm e𝐄(𝐫,t)_p\right]f^\pm (𝐫,𝐩,t)=0,`$ (4)   
where $`E_p=\sqrt{p^2+m^2}`$, $`m`$ is the meson’s mass and $`𝐄(𝐫,t)=_rV(r,t)`$ is the time-dependent electric field corresponding to the potential $`V(r,t)`$.

The solution is found by the method of characteristics. This involves solving the classical equations of motion and using the solutions to evolve the initial distribution, taken to be thermal

$`f^\pm (𝐫,𝐩,t_0)=\mathrm{exp}\left\{\left(E_p\pm V(r,t_0)\right)/T\right\},`$ (5)   
forward in time. The pion’s asymptotic momentum is computed numerically by a sixth order Runge-Kutta method with adaptive step sizes from a set of initial phase-space positions. The final momentum distribution is the result of computing the trajectories for many initial phase space points. The initial radial position was incremented in N<sub>r</sub>=50 steps with spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }r/R_0`$ = 0.02. The initial momentum was incremented in N<sub>p</sub>=600 steps with spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ = 1 MeV. The cosine of the angle between the initial position and momentum vectors was incremented in N<sub>z</sub>=100 steps of size $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{cos}\theta =0.02`$. Hence the total number of trajectories computed was $`3\times 10^6`$ for each set of initial conditions.

To determine the value of the surface expansion velocity, we match the average transverse momentum, as inferred from our assumption of a uniformly expanding sphere, with the measured one. The result is

$`p_T=\pi {\displaystyle \frac{2(2+v_s^2)\sqrt{1v_s^2}}{4v_s^3}}m_P.`$ (6)   
Note that $`v_s`$ should not be interpreted as a hydrodynamic flow velocity, rather, it embodies the combined effects of hydrodynamic flow and thermal motion of the net charge carriers, mainly protons.

For central Pb+Pb collisions at 158$`A`$ GeV , the number of protons per unit rapidity in the central region is on the order of 30. If we consider that the rapidity region spanned by the fireball is between 1 and 5 units, then we take as the effective fireball’s charge $`Z=120`$. To model the primordial distribution, we use an exponential parametrization of $`dN/p^2dp`$ from which we extract an effective temperature $`T_{eff}=110`$ MeV up to $`m_Tm=500`$ MeV. Figure 1 shows this representation in comparison to the transverse mass distributions of positive and negative pions. Both NA44 and NA49  have reported the transverse mass distribution in central Pb+Pb collisions at mid-rapidity to be $`dN/p_Tdp_T\mathrm{exp}(m_T/T_P)`$ with $`T_P`$ = 290 MeV. This corresponds to an average transverse momentum of 825 MeV. The value $`v_s`$ = 0.916 gives, according to Eq. (6), the match of the model to the proton spectra. The best fit to the $`\pi ^+/\pi ^{}`$ ratio is obtained for a value of the freeze-out radius for pions of 10 fm with a $`\chi _{p.d.o.f.}^2=1.67`$.

For central Au+Au collisions at 11.6$`A`$ GeV , the number of participating protons may be estimated from the data to be $`Z=116`$. The average proton transverse momentum is 820 MeV yielding the surface speed $`v_s=0.914`$. The slopes of the $`\pi ^+`$ and $`\pi ^{}`$ distributions up to $`m_Tm=400`$ MeV are the same to within several MeV; their average is $`111`$ MeV. All of these quantities are remarkably similar to those in central Pb+Pb collisions at the much higher energy of the SPS. The best fit to the $`\pi ^{}/\pi ^+`$ ratio is obtained for a value of the freeze-out radius for pions of 10 fm with a $`\chi _{p.d.o.f.}^2=0.53`$. The computed ratio is compared to the data in Fig. 2 and its appearance is quite satisfactory.

In conclusion, we have shown that the suppression of the ratio $`\pi ^+/\pi ^{}`$ in central Pb+Pb collisions at the SPS, as observed by NA44, and in central Au+Au collisions at the AGS, as observed by E866, can be quantitatively understood as a Coulomb effect generated by the electric field of an expanding and highly charged fireball. This ratio provides a good measure of the size of the fireball at decoupling. In principle, a different parametrization of the primordial distribution, such as a two temperature fit, might lead to an even better representation of data.