The nuclear overlap zone in noncentral relativistic heavy ion collisions is azimuthally very asymmetric. By varying the angle between the axes of deformation and the transverse direction of the pair momenta, the transverse Hanbury-Brown–Twiss radii oscillate in a characteristic way. It is shown that these oscillations allow determination of source sizes, deformations, as well as the opacity and duration of emission of the source created in any noncentral high energy nuclear collisions. The behavior of the physical quantities with centrality of the collisions is discussed—in particular, changes caused by a possible phase transition to a quark-gluon plasma.

• Received 24 September 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.2052