Lifetime estimations from RHIC Au+Au data

Abstract

We discuss a recently found family of exact and analytic, finite and accelerating, 1+1 dimensional solutions of perfect fluid relativistic hydrodynamics to describe the pseudorapidity densities and longitudinal HBT-radii and to estimate the lifetime parameter and the initial energy density of the expanding fireball in Au+Au collisions at RHIC with $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=130$ GeV and $200$ GeV colliding energies. From these exact solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics, we derive a simple and powerful formula to describe the pseudorapidity density distributions in high energy proton-proton and heavy ion collisions, and derive the scaling of the longitudinal HBT radius parameter as a function of the pseudorapidity density. We improve upon several oversimplifications in Bjorken's famous initial energy density estimate, and apply our results to estimate the initial energy densities of high energy reactions with data-driven pseudorapidity distributions. When compared to similar estimates at the LHC energies, our results indicate a surprising and non-monotonic dependence of the initial energy density on the energy of heavy ion collisions.