English

What does the rho-meson do? In-medium mass shift scenarios versus hadronic model calculations

Nuclear Theory 2008-11-26 v1

Abstract

The NA60 experiment has studied low-mass muon pair production in In-In collisions at 158AGeV158 {\rm AGeV} with unprecedented precision. With these results there is hope that the in-medium modifications of the vector meson spectral function can be constrained more thoroughly than before. We investigate in particular what can be learned about collisional broadening by a hot and dense medium and what constrains the experimental results put on in-medium mass shift scenarios. The data show a clear indication of considerable in-medium broadening effects but disfavor mass shift scenarios where the ρ\rho-meson mass scales with the square root of the chiral condensate. Scaling scenarios which predict at finite density a dropping of the ρ\rho-meson mass that is stronger than that of the quark condensate are clearly ruled out since they are also accompanied by a sharpening of the spectral function.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.nucl-th/0609083,
  title  = {What does the rho-meson do? In-medium mass shift scenarios versus hadronic model calculations},
  author = {Jorg Ruppert and Thorsten Renk},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:nucl-th/0609083},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

Proceeding contribution, Talk given by J. Ruppert at Workshop for Young Scientists on the Physics of Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Hot Quarks 2006), Villasimius, Sardinia, Italy, 15-20 May 2006. To appear in EPJC