Dileptons in Heavy-Ion Collisions

Abstract

Due to their penetrating nature, dileptons are a valuable probe for the properties of the hot and/or dense medium created in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Dilepton invariant-mass spectra provide direct access to the properties of the electromagnetic current-correlation function in strongly interacting matter. In this paper an overview is given of our current theoretical understanding of the dilepton phenomenology in comparison to recent data in heavy-ion collisions at the CERN SPS.

Comments: 6 pages, 2 figures, contribution to the proceedings of 18th Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC08), Eilat, Israel, November 9-14 2008