Seeing the QCD phase transition with phi mesons

Abstract

A double phi peak structure in the dilepton invariant mass spectrum from ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is proposed as a signal for the phase transition from the quark-gluon plasma to the hadronic matter. The low mass phi peak results from the decay of phi mesons with reduced in-medium mass during the transition. Furthermore, the measurement of the transverse momentum distribution of these low mass phi mesons offers a viable means for determining the temperature of the phase transition.