Interferometry search for new forms of matter in A+A collisions Original Research Article

A method allowing studies of the hadronic matter at the early evolution stage in A+A collisions is developed. It is based on an interferometry analysis of approximately conserved values such as the averaged phase-space density (APSD) and the specific entropy of thermal pions. The plateau found in the APSD behavior vs collision energy at SPS is associated, apparently, with the deconfinement phase transition at low SPS energies; a saturation of this quantity at the RHIC energies indicates the limiting Hagedorn temperature for hadronic matter.