Electromagnetic Signals and Backgrounds in Heavy-Ion Collisions:

Aspects of the dilepton spectrum in heavy-ion collisions are discussed, with special emphasis on using lattice computations to guide the phenomenology of finite temperature hadronic matter. The background rates for continuum dileptons expected in forthcoming experiments are summarised. Properly augmented by data from ongoing measurements at HERA, these rates will serve as a calibrating background for QGP searches. Recent results on the temperature dependence of the hadronic spectrum obtained in lattice computations below the deconfinement transition are summarised. Light vector meson masses are strongly temperature dependent. Accurate measurements of a resolved $\rho$-peak in dimuon spectra in present experiments are thus of fundamental importance. [file-length=200k characters; instructions for processing given; some Latex versions give error messages: ignore them completely]Comment: 9 pages (incl figures), preprint HLRZ 53/9