Effects of in-medium vector meson masses on low-mass dileptons from SPS heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

Using a relativistic transport model to describe the expansion of the fire-cylinder formed in the initial stage of heavy-ion collisions at SPS/CERN energies, we study the production of dileptons with a mass below about 1 GeV from these collisions. The initial hadron abundance and their momentum distributions in the fire-cylinder are determined by following the general features of the results from microscopic models based on the string dynamics and further requiring that the final proton and pion spectra and rapidity distributions are in agreement with available experimental data. For dilepton production, we include the Dalitz decay of π0, η, η′, ω and a1 mesons, the direct decay of primary ϱ0, ω and φ mesons, and the pion-pion annihilation that proceeds through the ϱ0 meson, the pion-rho annihilation that proceeds through the a1 meson, and the kaon-antikaon annihilation that proceeds through the φ meson. We find that the modification of vector meson properties, especially the decrease of their mass due to the partial restoration of chiral symmetry, in hot and dense hadronic matter, provides a quantitative explanation of the recently observed enhancement of low-mass dileptons by the CERES collaboration in central S+Au collisions and by the HELIOS-3 collaboration in central S+W collisions.