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A. Ipp:
"HBT correlations on the yoctosecond timescale from an anisotropic quark-gluon plasma";
Talk: Seminar at University of Tokyo, Komaba, University of Tokyo, Komaba (invited); 2012-07-27.

In heavy ion collisions, the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) is exposed to anisotropies in momentum space at early times. Azimuthal anisotropies lead to elliptic flow, while polar anisotropies can cause plasma instabilities. The latter kind of anisotropies may also cause a temporary suppression of photon emission and non-trivial pulse shapes of photons in the time domain.

In this talk, I present recent results for the calculation of Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) intensity correlations of direct photons including the effect of early polar momentum anisotropies. These anisotropies can cause a side peak in HBT correlations. Observing this in the HBT signal would allow to study the isotropization process and measure the isotropization time. It could also give first experimental evidence for possible photon double pulses at the yoctosecond timescale.