Low-Mass Dileptons from in-Medium Hadronic Interactions

Abstract

Medium Effects in low-mass dilepton production in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions are investigated using hadronic models. The rescattering of pions and rho mesons within a hot and dense hadron gas leads to substantial modifications in the $\pi^+\pi^- \to e^+ e^-$ annihilation process, which are shown to be important for understanding the recently observed dilepton enhancement at the CERN-SpS. Possible implications for the nature of the chiral phase transition are outlined.