A study of Bose-Einstein correlations in e+e− annihilations at LEP

Abstract Bose-Einstein correlations between like-sign charged track pairs have been studied in e + e − annihilation hadronic events at centre-of-mass energies around the Z 0 peak as a function of Q , the four-momentum difference of the pair. The measurement was performed with the OPAL detector at LEP. Assuming the charged tracks to be pions, the observed Bose-Einstein enhancement was used to extract the values of the strength of the effect and the radius of the pion emitting source, which were found to be λ =0.866±0.032±0.140 and R 0 =0.928±0.019±0.150 fm, respectively, where the first error is statistical and the second is systematic. The results do not show significant variation in comparison to e + e − annihilation measurements at lower centre-of-mass energies. If non-pion track contamination is taken into account, the value of the strength λ becomes consistent with unity.