Partonic effects on pion interferometry at RHIC

Using a multiphase transport (AMPT) model that includes both initial partonic and final hadronic interactions, we study the pion interferometry at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). We find that the two-pion correlation function is sensitive to the magnitude of the parton scatttering cross section, and a value of about 10 mb is needed to reproduce the measured correlation function in central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt s=130A$ GeV. The emission source of pions from the AMPT model is non-Gaussian, leading to source radii that can be more than twice larger than the radius parameters extracted from a Gaussian fit to the correlation function.