Effects of chiral symmetry restoration on meson and dilepton production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

We include effects of chiral symmetry and its restoration in the kinetic equations for baryon propagation and explore the consequences for $\eta$, $\pi^0$, $\rho$ and dilepton production in heavy-ion collisions at 1-2A GeV. Numerical calculations are performed using the GiBUU microscopic transport model supplemented by the parity-doublet model for the mean fields of the nucleon and the $N^*(1535)$ resonance. In this chiral model, a strong dropping of the Dirac mass of the $N^*(1535)$ in the high-density stage of a collision leads to a considerable enhancement in the production of this resonance as compared to the standard (non-linear) Walecka model. As the system expands, the Dirac masses of these abundant soft $N^*(1535)$ resonances gradually increase and ultimately cross the $N \eta$ decay threshold. As a result, an enhanced low-energy $\eta$ production is observed in the calculations with chiral mean fields. Comparing with TAPS data on $\eta$ and $\pi^0$ production we find that the chiral model improves the agreement for the $m_t$-spectra of $\eta$'s at small $m_t$ in heavy colliding systems. A similar enhancement is also observed in the soft $\rho$ production due to chiral symmetry and its partial restoration. The resulting dilepton yields at low and intermediate invariant masses are slightly enhanced due to these chiral effects which further improve the agreement between GiBUU transport simulations and HADES data for C+C at 1A GeV.