Dileptons, Charm and Bottom in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

Abstract

The relation of the thermal dilepton signal from deconfined matter, resulting in central ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies, to the background yields from the Drell-Yan process and correlated semileptonic decays of open charm and bottom mesons is analyzed. We demonstrate that very stringent kinematical cuts offer a chance to identify the thermal signal in the continuum region.

Comments: 8 LaTeX pages including eps figures, contribution to the Erice School on Nuclear Physics 1998 (to be published in "Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics")