Erratum to: Dilepton production in proton-induced reactions at SIS energies with the GiBUU transport model

We present dilepton spectra from p + p , d + p and p + Nb reactions at SIS energies, which were simulated with the GiBUU transport model in a resonance model approach. These spectra are compared to the data published by the HADES and DLS Collaborations. It is shown that the ?? spectral function includes non-trivial effects already in elementary reactions, due to production via baryon resonances, which can yield large contributions to the dilepton spectrum. Dilepton spectra from nuclear reactions in the energy range of the HADES experiment are thus found to be sensitive also to properties of nucleon resonances in the nuclear medium.     

Dilepton production in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at SPS energies

Dilepton production in proton- and nucleus-induced reactions is studied in the relativistic transport model using initial conditions determined by the string dynamics from RQMD. It is found that both the CERES and HELIOS-3 data for dilepton spectra in proton-nucleus reactions can be well described by the ‘conventional’ mechanism of Dalitz decay and direct vector meson decay. However, to provide a quantitative explanation of the observed dilepton spectra in central S+Au and S+W collisions requires contributions other than these direct decays. Introducing a decrease of vector meson masses in hot and dense medium, we find that these heavy-ion data can also be satisfactorily explained. This agrees with our earlier conclusions based on a fire-cylinder model. We also give predictions for Pb+Au collisions at 160 GeV/nucleon using current CERES mass resolution and acceptance.     

Hadrons in nuclei

Changes of hadronic properties in dense nuclear matter as predicted by theory have usually been investigated by means of relativistic heavy-ion reactions. In this talk I show that observable consequences of such changes can also be seen in more elementary reactions on nuclei. Particular emphasis is put on a discussion of photonuclear reactions; examples are the dilepton production at ≈1 GeV and the hadron production in nuclei at 10–20 GeV photon energies. The observable effects are expected to be as large as in relativistic heavy-ion collisions and can be more directly related to the underlying hadronic changes.     

Dilepton spectra from HADES

In-medium effects on K and ω mesons, which have been reported in the past, confirm the importance of experiments which study hadron properties in excited and normal nuclear matter with penetrating probes. The HADES experiment at GSI uses proton and nuclear beams to record experimental data on elementary and nuclear collisions. This second generation high acceptance detector system allows to detect and separate electron-positron pairs in a high multiplicity environment with a hadron suppression factor of 10^?9. Preliminary results on dilepton production in C+C collisions at 2 GeV per nucleon are presented. The comparison with UrQMD calculation shows agreement at the 20% level except at invariant masses below 100 MeV where deviations of up to 50% have been traced to shortcomings in the analysis.     

Can one discriminate the thermal dilepton signal against the open charm and bottom decay background in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions?

In ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at 20 (120) AGeV a copious production of charm (bottom) production sets in which, via correlated semileptonic () decays, gives rise to a dilepton yield at invariant mass 2–3 GeV in excess of the Drell-Yan yield and the thermal dilepton signal from deconfined matter as well. We show that appropriate single-electron transverse momentum cuts (suitable for ALICE at LHC) cause a threshold like behavior of the dilepton spectra from heavy-quark meson decays and the Drell-Yan process and can allow to observe a thermal dilepton signal from hot deconfined matter. Received: 28 September 1998 / Revised version: 27 November 1998 / Published online: 22 March 1999     

Measurement of low-mass e+e? pair production in 1 and 2?A?GeV C–C collision with HADES

HADES is a secondary generation experiment operated at GSI Darmstadt with the main goal to study dielectron production in proton, pion and heavy ion induced reactions. The first part of the HADES mission is to reinvestigate the puzzling pair excess measured by the DLS collaboration in C + C and Ca + Ca collisions at 1 A GeV. For this purpose dedicated measurements with the C + C system at 1 and 2 A GeV were performed. The pair excess above a cocktail of free hadronic decays has been extracted and compared to the one measured by DLS. Furthermore, the excess is confronted with predictions of various model calculations. Also at Panstwowa Wyzsza Szkola Zawodowa, 33-300 Nowy Sacz, Poland Also at Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Catania, 95125 Catania, Italy Also at Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal Also at ISEC Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal Also at Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy     

Nuclear Fragments in the Interactions of Carbon Nuclei with a Beryllium Target at the Energy of 0.95 GeV per Nucleon

The differential cross sections for the yields of nuclear fragments at an angle of 3.5? in the fragmentation of carbon nuclei with energy 0.95 GeV per nucleon on a beryllium target were measured in the FRAGM experiment at the ITEP TWA heavy-ion accelerator. The momentum spectra of fragments were used to test the following four models of ion–ion interactions: BC, INCL++, LAQGSM03.03, and QMD. For light fragments, the slope parameters of the kinetic-energy spectra were obtained in the cumulative region.     

Low-mass dielectrons from the PHENIX experiment at RHIC

The production of the low-mass dielectrons is considered to be a powerful tool to study the properties of the hot and dense matter created in the ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We present the preliminary results on the first measurements of the low-mass dielectron continuum in Au + Au collisions and the φ-meson production measured in Au + Au and d + Au collisions at = 200GeV performed by the PHENIX experiment.     

Dile pton production in p+ p,Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 200$ GeV

We study dilepton production in proton–proton, Cu+Cu as well as in Au+Au collisions at the center-of-mass energy \(\sqrt{s} =200\) GeV per participating nucleon pair within an extended statistical hadronization model. In extension to earlier studies we incorporate transport calculations for an estimate of uncorrelated e ⁺ e ^? -pairs from semileptonic D meson decays. While the invariant mass spectrum of dielectrons is well understood in the p+p collisions, severe discrepancies among different model scenarios based on hadronic degrees of freedom and recent data from the PHENIX Collaboration are found in heavy-ion collisions in the low-mass region from 0.15 to 0.6 GeV as well as in the intermediate mass regime from 1.1 to 3 GeV when employing the standard dilepton sources. We investigate, furthermore, the background from correlated dileptons that are not emitted as a pair from a parent hadron but emerge from semileptonic decays of two correlated daughter hadrons. Our calculations suggest a sizeable contribution of such sources in central heavy-ion collisions in the low-mass region. However, even the upper limits of our calculations are found to be far below the dilepton mass spectra of the PHENIX Collaboration.     

Investigating the microscopic properties of strongly interacting matter with HADES

In the energy domain of 1?C2 GeV kinetic energy per nucleon, HADES has measured rare and penetrating probes in elementary and heavy ion collisions. Our results demonstrate that electron pair emission in C+C collisions can essentially be explained as a superposition of independent N+N collisions. HADES results on e⁺e^? production in Ar+KCl collisions, however, show a strong enhancement of the dilepton yield relative to a reference spectrum obtained from elementary nucleon-nucleon reactions, signal the onset of medium effects beyond the superposition of individual N+N collisions. Intriguing results where also obtained from the reconstruction of hadrons with open and hidden strangeness. Analyses of the experimentally obtained hadronic yields measured in Ar+KCl allows to extract the chemical freeze-out conditions in the T -??B phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. While the measured abundance of all reconstructed particles are well described assuming thermalization, the also reconstructed double strange baryon ??^? appears about ten times more abundant than expected. This result will be discussed in the context of the exploration of the nuclear matter phase diagram in the region of finite density. Further investigations to search for significant medium effects, will be followed over the coming years with an upgraded HADES detector.     

Probing the strange quark condensate by di-electrons from φ-meson decays in heavy-ion collisions at SIS energies

QCD sum rules predict that the change of the strange quark condensate 〈ˉss〉 in hadron matter at finite baryon density causes a shift of the peak position of the di-electron spectra from φ-meson decays. Due to the expansion of hadron matter in heavy-ion collisions, the φ peak suffers a smearing governed by the interval of density in the expanding fireball, which appears as an effective broadening of the di-electron spectrum in the φ region. The emerging broadening is sensitive to the in-medium change of 〈ˉss〉. This allows to probe directly in-medium modifications of 〈ˉss〉 via di-electron spectra in heavy-ion collisions at SIS energies with HADES. Received: 22 November 2002 / Accepted: 30 January 2003 / Published online: 29 April 2003     

Measurement of charged pions in 12C + 12C collisions at 1 A GeV and 2 A GeV with HADES

We present the results of a study of charged-pion production in ¹²C + ¹²C collisions at incident beam energies of 1A GeV and 2A GeV using the HADES spectrometer at GSI. The main emphasis of the HADES program is on the dielectron signal from the early phase of the collision. Here, however, we discuss the data with respect to the emission of charged hadrons, specifically the production of mesons, which are related to neutral pions representing a dominant contribution to the dielectron yield. We have performed the first large-angular-range measurement of the distribution of mesons for the ¹²C + ¹²C collision system covering a fairly large rapidity interval. The pion yields, transverse-mass and angular distributions are compared with calculations done within a transport model, as well as with existing data from other experiments. The anisotropy of pion production is systematically analyzed.     

Electromagnetic probes of strongly interacting matter: probes of chiral symmetry restoration?

The QCD sum rule approach to in-medium modifications of the ω meson in nuclear matter is reviewed with emphasis of its relation to 4-quark condensates and chiral symmetry restoration. Possible implications of the CBTAPS experiment for the reaction γA → A′ω(→ π⁰γ) are sketched and the particularly important role of di-electron probes, accessible with HADES, is highlighted. A brief update of a parametrization of the previous dilepton and photon probes from CERES and WA98 of heavy-ion collisions at CERN-SPS energies is presented.     

Electromagnetic radiation and in-medium effects

The theory of thermal photon and dilepton emission from a hot and dense hadronic gas, as well as from the Quark-Gluon Plasma, is reviewed in the context of extracting in-medium properties of the matter constituents. In phenomenological applications to ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions we focus on recent photon and dilepton spectra as measured by WA98 and CERES/NA45, respectively, at CERN-SPS energies.     

How important are next-to-leading order models in predicting strange particle spectra in p+p collisions at STAR?

STAR has measured a variety of strange particle species in p+p collisions at  =200 GeV. These high statistics data are ideal for comparing to existing leading- and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD (pQCD) models. Next-to-leading (NLO) models have been successful in describing inclusive hadron production using parameterized fragmentation functions (FF) for quarks and gluons. However, in order to describe identified strange particle spectra at NLO, knowledge of flavor separated FF is essential. Such FF have recently been parameterized using data by the OPAL experiment and allow for the first time to perform NLO calculation for strange baryons. In fact, comparing the STAR Λ data with these calculations allow to put a constraint on the gluon fragmentation function. We show that the leading-order (LO) event generator PYTHIA has to be tuned significantly to reproduce the STAR identified strange particle data. In particular, it fails to describe the observed enhancement of baryon-to-meson ratio at intermediate p_T (2–6 GeV/c). In heavy-ion (HI) collisions this observable has been extensively compared with models and shows a strong dependency on collision centrality or parton density. In the HI context the observed enhancement has been explained by recent approaches in terms of parton coalescense and recombination models. PACS 25.75.Dw; 25.40.Ep; 24.10.Lx     

Single-nucleon and heavy recoil spectra in intermediate energy heavy-ion reactions

We study the nucleon emission spectra from a local large-volume hot zone formed in intermediate energy (～ 20–100 MeV/nucleon) heavy-ion reactions. The hot zone is continuously being cooled by nucleon emission while the cold nuclear matter surrounding the hot zone is being heated up by nucleon absorption until full thermal equilibrium is reached. The sequential evaporation from the equilibrated reaction complex is followed up. The recoil properties of the residual heavy fragments are also investigated.     

Quarkochemistry in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

The time necessary to achieve the equilibrium ratio of strange to non-strange quarks in heavy-ion reactions is estimated in the framework of perturbative QCD. It is found, in the present approximation, to be much larger than the total collision time of even a central U + U collision at E_lab=2.1 GeV/nucleon bombarding energy.     

Hypertriton and light nuclei production at Λ-production subthreshold energy in heavy-ion collisions

High-energy heavy-ion collisions produce abundant hyperons and nucleons. A dynamical coalescence model coupled with the ART model is employed to study the production probabilities of light clusters, deuteron (d), triton (t), helion (³He), and hypertriton (_Λ³H) at subthreshold energy of Λ production (≈ 1 GeV per nucleon). We study the dependence on the reaction system size of the coalescence penalty factor per additional nucleon and entropy per nucleon. The Strangeness Population Factor (S₃ / (³He × (Λ/p))) shows an extra suppression of hypertriton comparing to light clusters of the same mass number. This model predicts a hypertriton production cross-section of a few μb in ³⁶Ar+³⁶Ar, ⁴⁰Ca+⁴⁰Ca and ⁵⁶Ni+⁵⁶Ni in 1 A GeV reactions. The production rate is as high as a few hypertritons per million collisions, which shows that the fixed-target heavy-ion collisions at CSR (Lanzhou/China) at Λ subthreshold energy are suitable for breaking new ground in hypernuclear physics.