Femtoscopic Correlation Functions in Density Operator Representation
Abstract
Femtoscopic correlation functions (CFs) have been increasingly used to extract strong interactions between pairs of unstable particles, but their physical soundness has recently been questioned. To answer this, we formulate CFs at the operator level, with the observed subsystem described by a reduced density operator and subsequent dynamics absorbed into an effective measurement operator. The Koonin-Pratt form is recovered under four well-motivated reductions. The formulation makes explicit that the source-side and interaction-side representations must be consistently matched, and motivates an operational convention in which a measured reference correlation establishes a compatible source--interaction pairing that can be extended to other pairs for CF-to-CF predictions.
Related
- Femtoscopic correlation functions between the lightest charmed hadrons
- Partial-wave decomposition of the p--5ΛHe correlation function: a femtoscopic route to the 6ΛLi resonance
- Hybrid Clifford Codes via Operator Algebra Quantum Error Correction and Projective Representation Theory
- Compact and stable representation of real-frequency spectral functions for machine learning
- Learning in the Transverse Subspace: A Minimal Representation for Divergence-Free Operator Learning
BibTeX
@misc{liu2026femtoscopic,
title = {{Femtoscopic Correlation Functions in Density Operator Representation}},
author = {Hao-Nan Liu and Duo-Lun Ge and Zhi-Wei Liu and Jun-Xu Lu and Li-Sheng Geng},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.19161},
eprint = {2609.19161},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19161},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Femtoscopic Correlation Functions in Density Operator Representation
AU - Hao-Nan Liu
AU - Duo-Lun Ge
AU - Zhi-Wei Liu
AU - Jun-Xu Lu
AU - Li-Sheng Geng
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.19161
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19161
AB - Femtoscopic correlation functions (CFs) have been increasingly used to extract strong interactions between pairs of unstable particles, but their physical soundness has recently been questioned. To answer this, we formulate CFs at the operator level, with the observed subsystem described by a reduced density operator and subsequent dynamics absorbed into an effective measurement operator. The Koonin-Pratt form is recovered under four well-motivated reductions. The formulation makes explicit that the source-side and interaction-side representations must be consistently matched, and motivates an operational convention in which a measured reference correlation establishes a compatible source--interaction pairing that can be extended to other pairs for CF-to-CF predictions.
ER -