Intermediate mass dilepton production in heavy ion collisions at 200-A/GeV

May, 1998
4 pages
Published in:
  • Phys.Rev.Lett. 81 (1998) 1572-1575
e-Print:

Citations per year

19982002200620102014012345
Abstract:
Through the analysis of HELIOS-3 data obtained at the CERN SPS, we demonstrate the importance of secondary processes for dilepton production in heavy-ion collisions in the intermediate invariant mass region. We find that while the dilepton spectra between 1 to 2.5 GeV from proton-induced reactions can be attributed to the decay of primary vector mesons, charmed hadrons, and initial Drell-Yan processes; the strong enhancement seen in the heavy-ion data as compared to the background comes mainly from the secondary processes which are germane to heavy-ion collisions. Furthermore, we find πa1llˉ\pi a_1\to l{\bar l} to be the most important process in this mass region, as was found by thermal rate calculations. We emphasize the constraints on the elementary cross sections by the experimental data from e+ee^+e^- annihilation.
  • scattering: heavy ion
  • sulfur
  • tungsten
  • lepton: pair production
  • mass spectrum: dilepton
  • p nucleus: nuclear reaction
  • nuclear reaction: model
  • a1(1260)
  • numerical calculations: interpretation of experiments
  • 200 GeV/nucleon
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