Pion damping width from SU(2) x SU(2) NJL model

Within the framework of the NJL model, we investigate the modification of the pion damping width in a hot pion gas for temperatures ranging from 0 to 180 MeV. The pion is found to broaden noticeably at T > 60 MeV. Near the chiral phase transition T ~ 180 MeV, the pion width is saturated and amounts to 70 MeV. The main contribution to the width comes from pion-pion collisions. Other contributions are found negligibly small.Comment: LaTeX2e, 13 pages, 2 figure

Recent results from Pb-Au collisions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon obtained with the CERES spectrometer

During the 1996 lead run time, CERES has accumulated 42 million events, corresponding to a factor of 5 more statistics than in 1995 and 2.5 million events of a special photon-run. We report on the results of the low-mass e$^+$e$^-$-pair analysis. Since the most critical item is the poor signal-to-background ratio we also discuss the understanding of this background, in absolute terms, with the help of a detailed Monte Carlo simulation. We show preliminary results of the photon analysis and summarize the results of the hadron analysis preliminarily reported on already at QM'97Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, Proceedings of the XIV Int. Conf. on Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions,Quark Matter 99, Torino, Italy, May 10 - 15, 199

What does the rho-meson do? In-medium mass shift scenarios versus hadronic model calculations

The NA60 experiment has studied low-mass muon pair production in In-In collisions at $158 {\rm AGeV}$ with unprecedented precision. With these results there is hope that the in-medium modifications of the vector meson spectral function can be constrained more thoroughly than before. We investigate in particular what can be learned about collisional broadening by a hot and dense medium and what constrains the experimental results put on in-medium mass shift scenarios. The data show a clear indication of considerable in-medium broadening effects but disfavor mass shift scenarios where the $\rho$-meson mass scales with the square root of the chiral condensate. Scaling scenarios which predict at finite density a dropping of the $\rho$-meson mass that is stronger than that of the quark condensate are clearly ruled out since they are also accompanied by a sharpening of the spectral function.Comment: Proceeding contribution, Talk given by J. Ruppert at Workshop for Young Scientists on the Physics of Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Hot Quarks 2006), Villasimius, Sardinia, Italy, 15-20 May 2006. To appear in EPJ

Lepton-pair production in nuclear collisions - past, present, future

The key results on lepton-pair production in ultra-relativistic nuclear collisions are shortly reviewed, starting at the roots of pp collisions in the seventies, and ending at the perspectives of the colliders RHIC and LHC. The presence is dominated by the recent precision results from NA60 at the CERN SPS, culminating in the first measurement of the in-medium rho spectral function and the transverse flow of the associated thermal radiation. The seeming cut-off of the flow above the rho may well be the first direct hint for thermal radiation of partonic origin in nuclear collisions. The major milestones in the theoretical developments are also covered.Comment: Invited talk at INPC07, Tokyo, June 3-8, 200

New method for measuring azimuthal distributions in nucleus-nucleus collisions

The methods currently used to measure azimuthal distributions of particles in heavy ion collisions assume that all azimuthal correlations between particles result from their correlation with the reaction plane. However, other correlations exist, and it is safe to neglect them only if azimuthal anisotropies are much larger than 1/sqrt(N), with N the total number of particles emitted in the collision. This condition is not satisfied at ultrarelativistic energies. We propose a new method, based on a cumulant expansion of multiparticle azimuthal correlations, which allows to measure much smaller values of azimuthal anisotropies, down to 1/N. It is simple to implement and can be used to measure both integrated and differential flow. Furthermore, this method automatically eliminates the major systematic errors, which are due to azimuthal asymmetries in the detector acceptance.Comment: final version (misprints corrected), to be published in Phys.Rev.

Semi-Hard Scattering Unraveled from Collective Dynamics by Two-Pion Azimuthal Correlations in 158 A GeV/c Pb + Au Collisions

Elliptic flow and two-particle azimuthal correlations of charged hadrons and high-$p_T$ pions ($p_T>$ 1 GeV/$c$) have been measured close to mid-rapidity in 158A GeV/$c$ Pb+Au collisions by the CERES experiment. Elliptic flow ($v_2$) rises linearly with $p_T$ to a value of about 10% at 2 GeV/$c$. Beyond $p_T\approx$ 1.5 GeV/$c$, the slope decreases considerably, possibly indicating a saturation of $v_2$ at high $p_T$. Two-pion azimuthal anisotropies for $p_T>$ 1.2 GeV/$c$ exceed the elliptic flow values by about 60% in mid-central collisions. These non-flow contributions are attributed to near-side and back-to-back jet-like correlations, the latter exhibiting centrality dependent broadening.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Letters, 4 pages, 5 figure

Thermal rho and sigma mesons from chiral symmetry and unitarity

We study the temperature evolution of the rho and sigma mass and width, using a unitary chiral approach. The one-loop pion-pion scattering amplitude in Chiral Perturbation Theory at finite temperature is unitarized via the Inverse Amplitude Method. Our results predict a clear increase with T of both the rho and sigma widths. The masses decrease slightly for high T, while the rho-pion-pion coupling increases. The rho behavior seems to be favored by experimental results. In the sigma case, it signals chiral symmetry restoration.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, revtex. References and brief comments added. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Dileptons from hot heavy static photons

We compute the production rate of lepton pair by static photons at finite temperature at two-loop order. We treat the infrared region of the gluon phase space carefully by using a hard thermal loop gluon propagator. The result is free of infrared and collinear divergences and exhibits an enhancement which produces a result of order $\sim e^2 g^3$ instead of $\sim e^2 g^4$ as would be expected from ordinary perturbation theory.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure

Event-by-event fluctuations at SPS

Results on event-by-event fluctuations of the mean transverse momentum and net charge in Pb-Au collisions, measured by the CERES Collaboration at CERN-SPS, are presented. We discuss the centrality and beam energy dependence and compare our data to cascade calculations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, proceedings to INPC2004 Goteborg, Swede

e+e--pair production in Pb-Au collisions at 158 GeV per nucleon

We present the combined results on electron-pair production in 158 GeV/n {Pb-Au} ($\sqrt{s}$= 17.2 GeV) collisions taken at the CERN SPS in 1995 and 1996, and give a detailed account of the data analysis. The enhancement over the reference of neutral meson decays amounts to a factor of 2.31$\pm0.19 (stat.)\pm0.55 (syst.)\pm0.69 (decays)$ for semi-central collisions (28% $\sigma/\sigma_{geo}$) when yields are integrated over $m>$ 200 MeV/$c^2$ in invariant mass. The measured yield, its stronger-than-linear scaling with $N_{ch}$, and the dominance of low pair $p_t$ strongly suggest an interpretation as {\it thermal radiation} from pion annihilation in the hadronic fireball. The shape of the excess centring at $m\approx$ 500 MeV/$c^2$, however, cannot be described without strong medium modifications of the $\rho$ meson. The results are put into perspective by comparison to predictions from Brown-Rho scaling governed by chiral symmetry restoration, and from the spectral-function many-body treatment in which the approach to the phase boundary is less explicit.Comment: 39 pages, 40 figures, to appear in Eur.Phys.J.C. (2005