THERMAL DIMUONS AT RHIC ENERGIES

Abstract

We calculate the dimuon production rate from a thermalized quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies. Higher-order QCD corrections are included by using an analytical correction factor K(i), which gives very good agreement with experimental Drell-Yan data, and predicts a large enhancement of the thermal dimuon emission over the lowest order rates. We compare the thermal dimuon yields with the expected production from open-charm decays and Drell-Yan background and assess the prospects of observing thermal dimuons from the quark-gluon-plasma at invariant masses of a few GeV.