Dilepton production in nucleus-nucleus collisions at top SPS energy within the Parton-Hadron-String Dynamics (PHSD) transport approach

TL;DR

This study uses the PHSD transport approach to analyze dilepton production in In+In collisions at 158 AGeV, successfully describing experimental data and highlighting the role of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma in dilepton yields.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive microscopic transport model incorporating partonic and hadronic phases to explain dilepton production in heavy-ion collisions at SPS energies.

Findings

Dilepton yields match NA60 data when including vector meson broadening.

Intermediate mass dileptons are dominated by quark-antiquark annihilation in the sQGP.

Softening of transverse mass spectra is approximately reproduced.

Abstract

Dilepton production in In+In collisions at 158 AGeV is studied within the microscopic parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach that incorporates explicit partonic degrees-of-freedom, dynamical hadronization as well as the more familiar hadronic dynamics in the final reaction stages. A comparison to the data of the NA60 Collaboration shows that the measured dilepton yield is well described by including the collisional broadening of vector mesons, while simultaneously accounting for the electromagnetic radiation of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) via off-shell quark-antiquark annihilation, quark annihilation with additional gluon Bremsstrahlung and the gluon-Compton scattering mechanisms. In particular, the spectra in the intermediate mass range (1 GeV < M < 2.5 GeV) are dominated by quark-antiquark annihilation in the nonperturbative QGP. Also, the observed softening of the transverse mass spectra at intermediate masses (1 GeV < M < 2.5 GeV) is approximately reproduced. Furthermore, for dileptons of low masses (M < 0.6 GeV), we find a sizable contribution from the quark annihilation with additional gluon bremsstrahlung, thus providing another possible window for probing the properties of the sQGP.