Transverse radial expansion in nuclear collisions and two particle correlations

At the very first stage of an ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collision new particles are produced in individual nucleon-nucleon collisions. In the transverse plane, all particles from a single NN collision are initially located at the same position. The subsequent thermalization and transverse radial expansion of the system create strong position-momentum correlations and lead to characteristic rapidity, transverse momentum, and azimuthal Correlations among the produced particles. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.