Probing confinement by direct photons and dileptons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how direct photons and dileptons produced by quarks interacting with confining color fields can serve as probes for quark-gluon plasma formation in heavy ion collisions, highlighting a novel radiation mechanism.

Contribution

It introduces a boundary-induced radiation mechanism for photons and dileptons, offering a new method to probe quark-gluon plasma in relativistic heavy ion collisions.

Findings

Calculated photon spectrum matches experimental data.

Predicted azimuthal anisotropy in dilepton distribution.

Boundary-induced mechanism differs from standard production processes.

Abstract

The intensive synchrotron radiation resulting from quarks interacting with the collective confining color field in relativistic heavy ion collisions is discussed. The spectrum of photons with large transverse momentum is calculated and compared with the experimental data to demonstrate the feasibility of this type of radiation. A study of the earlier predicted azimuthal anisotropy in the angular distribution of dileptons with respect to the three-momentum of the pair is performed as well. This boundary-induced mechanism of lepton pair production is shown to possess the features that are distinctly different from the standard mechanisms and can potentially provide an efficient probe of quark-gluon plasma formation.