  Small-angle correlations of pairs of protons emitted in central collisions of
Ca + Ca, Ru + Ru and Au + Au at beam energies from 400 to 1500 MeV per nucleon
are investigated with the FOPI detector system at SIS/GSI Darmstadt.
Dependences on system size and beam energy are presented which extend the
experimental data basis of pp correlations in the SIS energy range
substantially. The size of the proton-emitting source is estimated by comparing
the experimental data with the output of a final-state interaction model which
utilizes either static Gaussian sources or the one-body phase-space
distribution of protons provided by the BUU transport approach. The trends in
the experimental data, i.e. system-size and beam energy dependences, are well
reproduced by this hybrid model. However, the pp correlation function is found
rather insensitive to the stiffness of the equation of state entering the
transport model calculations.
