Dilepton Signature of a First-Order Phase Transition

Abstract

The search for a first-order phase transition in strongly interacting matter is one of the major objectives in the exploration of the phase diagram of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). In the present work we investigate dilepton radiation from the hot and dense fireballs created in Au-Au collisions at projectile energies of 1-2 $A$GeV for potential signatures of a first-order transition. Toward this end, we employ a hydrodynamic simulation with two different equations of state, with and without a phase transition. The latter is constrained by susceptibilities at vanishing chemical potential from lattice-QCD as well as neutron star properties, while the former is implemented via modification of the mean-fields in the quark phase. We find that the latent heat involved in the first-order transition leads to a substantial increase in the low-mass thermal emission signal, by about a factor of two above the cross-over scenario.

14 pages, 8 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• 50 Years of Quantum Chromodynamics
• Dense Nuclear Matter Equation of State from Heavy-Ion Collisions
• The Present and Future of QCD
• Effects of a phase transition on two-pion interferometry in heavy-ion collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}=2.4-7.7$ GeV
• Distinguishing the sources of dielectron anisotropic flow at low beam energies
• Chiral, parity-doublet, effective-Lagrangian mean-field theories for nuclear and astrophysical phenomenology
• Toward a Unified Understanding of the Dense Matter Equation of State