Thermal dilepton rates and in-medium hadron properties from lattice QCD

Abstract

Recent progress of lattice investigations in thermal physics is summarized in this contribution. Hadronic spectral functions can be reconstructed from correlation functions in Euclidean time based on the Maximum Entropy Method without a priori assumptions on the spectral shape. The thermal modifications of hadron properties are investigated in the scalar, pseudo-scalar, vector and axial-vector channels near and above the deconfinement transition temperature for charmonium systems as well as for light quarks. Moreover, the reconstructed vector meson spectral function allows to extract the thermal cross section for the production of dilepton pairs at vanishing momentum.