Electromagnetic probes of dense matter in heavy-ion collisions Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Dilepton and photon production in heavy-ion collisions at SPS energies are studied in the relativistic transport model that incorporates self-consistently the change of hadron masses in dense matter. It is found that the dilepton spectra in proton-nucleus reactions can be well described by the conventional mechanism of Dalitz decay and direct vector meson decay. However, to provide a quantitative explanation of the observed dilepton spectra in central heavy-ion collisions requires contributions other than these direct decays and also various medium effects. Introducing a decrease of vector meson masses in hot dense medium, we find that these heavy-ion data can be satisfactorily explained. Furthermore, the single photon spectra in our calculations with either free or in-medium meson masses do not exceed the upper bound deduced from the experiments by the WA80 Collaboration.

published proceedings

  • Nuclear Physics A

author list (cited authors)

  • Li, G. Q., Brown, G. E., & Ko, C. M.

citation count

  • 1

complete list of authors

  • Li, GQ||Brown, GE||Ko, CM

publication date

  • February 1998