Determining source cumulants in femtoscopy with Gram-Charlier and Edgeworth series

Abstract: Lowest-order cumulants provide important information on the shape of the emission source in femtoscopy. For the simple case of noninteracting identical particles, we show how the fourth-order source cumulant can be determined from measured cumulants in momentum space. The textbook Gram-Charlier series is found to be highly inaccurate, while the related Edgeworth series provides increasingly accurate estimates. Ordering of terms compatible with the Central Limit Theorem appears to play a crucial role even for nongaussian distributions.