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Thermal dilepton radiation from the hot fireballs created in high-energy heavy-ion collisions provides unique insights into the properties of the produced medium. We first show how the predictions of hadronic many-body theory for a melting ρ meson, coupled with quark–gluon plasma emission utilizing a modern lattice-QCD based equation of state, yield a quantitative description of dilepton spectra in heavy-ion collisions at the SPS and the RHIC beam energy scan program. We utilize these results to systematically extract the excess yields and their invariant-mass spectral slopes to predict the excitation function of fireball lifetimes and (early) temperatures, respectively. We thereby demonstrate that future measurements of these quantities can yield unprecedented information on basic fireball properties. Specifically, our predictions quantify the relation between the measured and maximal fireball temperature, and the proportionality of excess yield and total lifetime. This information can serve as a “caloric” curve to search for a first-order QCD phase transition, and to detect non-monotonous lifetime variations possibly related to critical phenomena.
The width of the ω meson in cold nuclear matter is computed in a hadronic many-body approach, focusing on a detailed treatment of the medium modifications of intermediate πρ states. The π and ρ propagators are dressed by their self-energies in nuclear matter taken from previously constrained many-body calculations. The pion self-energy includes Nh and Δh excitations with short-range correlations, while the ρ self-energy incorporates the same dressing of its 2π cloud with a full 3-momentum dependence and vertex corrections, as well as direct resonance-hole excitations; both contributions were quantitatively fit to total photo-absorption spectra and πN→ρN scattering. Our calculations account for in-medium decays of type ωN→πN(⁎),ππN(Δ), and 2-body absorptions ωNN→NN(⁎),πNN. This causes deviations of the in-medium ω width from a linear behavior in density, with important contributions from spacelike ρ propagators. The ω width from the ρπ cloud may reach up to 200 MeV at normal nuclear matter density, with a moderate 3-momentum dependence. This largely resolves the discrepancy of linear T–ϱ approximations with the values deduced from nuclear photoproduction measurements.
Preface
(2012)