Physical Information in the Thermal Continuum Dilepton Spectra

We consider the intermediate mass continuum of dileptons (between $\phi$ and $J/\psi$) in ultrarelativistic heavy--ion collisions. The thermal signal depends essentially on thermodynamic state parameters of the hottest parton stage as $(\tau_i\lambda^q_iT_i^3)^2$ 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.