Speaker
Description
Spatially inhomogeneous phases may arise transiently in hot and baryon-rich QCD matter and may leave characteristic imprints on two-pion Hanbury Brown–Twiss (HBT) correlations. We investigate such signatures in Au+Au collisions in the RHIC Beam Energy Scan region using the JAM2 transport model. A controlled one-dimensional spatial modulation is imposed on pion emission distributions generated by JAM2, and the resulting finite-relative-momentum correlation structures are studied through an energy scan over $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 7.7–11.5 GeV. We compare calculations with and without the JAM2 first-order phase-transition equation-of-state option. Preliminary results show systematic beam-energy and equation-of-state dependences of the correlation features. We characterize the modulation-related signal using both the correlation function and its ratio to the corresponding unmodulated reference, including the peak position, amplitude, width, and statistical uncertainty. Complementary collective-flow observables will also be examined to relate the HBT response to equation-of-state-dependent expansion dynamics. This study provides a transport-based framework for assessing HBT sensitivity to possible inhomogeneous phases in finite-density QCD.