dc.description.abstract | In this paper, the first femtoscopic analysis of pion–kaon correlations at the LHC is reported. The analysis
was performed on the Pb–Pb collision data at √sNN = 2.76 TeV recorded with the ALICE detector. The
non-identical particle correlations probe the spatio-temporal separation between sources of different
particle species as well as the average source size of the emitting system. The sizes of the pion and kaon
sources increase with centrality, and pions are emitted closer to the centre of the system and/or later
than kaons. This is naturally expected in a system with strong radial flow and is qualitatively reproduced
by hydrodynamic models. ALICE data on pion–kaon emission asymmetry are consistent with (3+1)-
dimensional viscous hydrodynamics coupled to a statistical hadronisation model, resonance propagation,
and decay code THERMINATOR 2 calculation, with an additional time delay between 1 and 2 fm/c for
kaons. The delay can be interpreted as evidence for a significant hadronic rescattering phase in heavy-ion
collisions at the LHC. | en |