First results from NA60 on low mass muon pair production in In-In collisions at 158 GeV/nucleon

Abstract

The NA60 experiment at the CERN SPS studies dimuon production in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. The combined information from a novel vertex telescope made of radiation-tolerant silicon pixel detectors and from the muon spectrometer previously used in NA50 allows for a precise measurement of the muon vertex and a much improved dimuon mass resolution. We report on first results from the data taken for Indium-Indium collisions at 158 AGeV/nucleon in 2003, concentrating on a subsample of about 370 000 muon pairs in the mass range $<1.2$ GeV/$c^2$. The light vector mesons $\omega$ and $\varphi$ are completely resolved, with a mass resolution of about 23 MeV/$c^2$ at the $\varphi$. The transverse momentum spectra of the $\varphi$ are measured over the continuous range $0<p_{\mathrm{T}}<2.5$ GeV/c; the inverse slope parameter of the spectra is found to increase with centrality, with an average value of $T=252\pm 3$ MeV.

9 pages, 6 figures. Plenary talk, SQM2004 conference, Cape Town, South Africa 15-20 September, 2004. To be published in Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics

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