Physical Information in the Thermal Continuum Dilepton Spectra

Abstract

We consider the intermediate mass continuum of dileptons (between $\varphi$ and $J/\psi$) in ultrarelativistic heavy--ion collisions. The thermal signal depends essentially on thermodynamic state parameters of the hottest parton stage as $({\tau }_i{\lambda }_i^q{T}_i^3{)}^2$ convoluted with an involved detector acceptance function. A refined analysis of the transverse pair momentum spectrum at fixed dilepton transverse mass can reveal the maximum temperature of parton matter.

Comments: 3 LaTeX pages including eps figures, contribution to the Erice School on Nuclear Physics 1998 (to be published in "Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics")