Transverse momentum dependence of Bose-Einstein correlations in 200A GeV/cS+A collisions.

The NA35 experiment has collected a high statistics set of momentum analyzed negative hadrons near and forward of midrapidity for central collisions of 200[ital A]GeV/[ital c] [sup 32]S+S, Cu, Ag, and Au. Using momentum space correlations to study the size of the source of particle production, the transverse source radii are found to decrease by [similar to]40% at midrapidity and [similar to]20% at forward rapidity while the longitudinal radius [ital R][sub [ital L]] is found to decrease by [similar to]50% as [ital p][sub [ital T]] increases over the interval 50 [lt][ital p][sub [ital T]][lt]600MeV/[ital c]. Calculations using a microscopic phase space approach (relativistic quantum molecular dynamics) reproduce the observed trends of the data.