Pion broadening and low-mass dilepton production

Abstract

We determine mass and transverse momentum spectra of dileptons produced in Pb+Au (158 GeV/u) collisions within a pion annihilation model. A fit to the data requires simultaneous mass reduction and broadening of the in-medium rho propagator. The introduction of a finite pion width, as required within self-consistent approaches to the interacting pion gas, further improves the agreement with the data.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure