Fine-tuning two-particle interferometry I: Effects from temperature gradients in the source

A comprehensive model study of Bose-Einstein correlation radii in heavy ion collisions is presented. The starting point is a longitudinally and transversally expanding fireball, represented at freeze-out by an azimuthally symmetric emission function. The freeze-out temperature is allowed to feature transverse and temporal gradients. Their effects on the correlation radii are studied. In particular, we evaluate numerically their dependence on the transverse mass of the particle pairs and check a recent suggestion, based on analytical approximations, that for certain reasonable source parameters all three correlation radii satisfy simultaneously a scaling. Received: 2 July 1997 / Revised version: 25 September 1997 / Published online: 23 February 1998