Virtual Photons Shed Light on the Early Temperature of Dense QCD Matter

Abstract

Dileptons produced during heavy-ion collisions represent a unique probe of the QCD phase diagram, and convey information about the state of the strongly interacting system at the moment their preceding off-shell photon is created. In this study, we compute thermal dilepton yields from Au+Au collisions performed at different beam energies, employing a (3+1)-dimensional dynamic framework combined with emission rates accurate at next-to-leading order in perturbation theory and which include baryon chemical potential dependencies. By comparing the effective temperature extracted from the thermal dilepton invariant mass spectrum with the average temperature of the fluid, we offer a robust quantitative validation of dileptons as effective probe of the early quark-gluon plasma stage.

arXiv commentv1: 6+2 pages, 4+2 figures; v2: refs added, a table added in the Supplemental Material. Companion paper: arXiv:2311.06675

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• The QCD phase diagram and Beam Energy Scan physics: a theory overview
• Dilepton production at next-to-leading order and intermediate invariant-mass observables
• Lattice QCD estimates of thermal photon production from the QGP
• Bulk medium properties of heavy-ion collisions from the beam energy scan with a multistage hydrodynamic model
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• Dileptons at Colliders as Probes of the Quark-Gluon Plasma