We examine the two-pion interferometry for a granular source of quark-gluon plasma droplets. The evolution of the droplets is described by relativistic hydrodynamics with an equation of state suggested by lattice gauge results. Pions are assumed to be emitted thermally from the droplets at the freeze-out configuration characterized by a freeze-out temperature T f . We find that the HBT radius Rout decreases if the initial size of the droplets decreases. On the other hand, R side depends on the droplet spatial distribution and is relatively independent of the droplet size. It increases with an increase in the width of the spatial distribution and the collective-expansion velocity of the droplets. As a result, the value of Rout can lie close to R side for a granular quark-gluon plasma source. The granular model of the emitting source may provide an explanation to the RHIC HBT puzzle and may lead to a new insight into the dynamics of the quark-gluon plasma phase transition.

We report a particle source imaging analysis based on two-pion correlations in high multiplicity Au+Au collisions at beam energies between 2A and 8A GeV. We apply the imaging technique introduced by Brown and Danielewicz, which allows a model-independent extraction of source functions with useful accuracy out to relative pion separations of about 20 fm. The extracted source functions have Gaussian shapes. Values of source functions at zero separation are almost constant across the energy range under study. Imaging results are found to be consistent with conventional source parameters obtained from a multidimensional Hanburg-Brown-Twiss analysis.

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