The polarization of virtual photons produced in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions provides information on the conditions in the emitting medium. In a hydrodynamic framework, the resulting angular anisotropy of the dilepton final state depends on the flow as well as on the transverse momentum and invariant mass of the photon. We illustrate these effects in dilepton production from quark-antiquark annihilation in the QGP phase and $π^+π^-$ annihilation in the hadronic phase for a static medium in global equilibrium and for a longitudinally expanding system.
It has been observed recently that while continuum dilepton production and open charm production in high-energy $pA$ collisions can be described in terms of the superposition of $pp$ collisions, dilepton yields in S+U collisions are in excess of similar extrapolations. This feature can be explained as arising from the interaction of gluons produced in different soft baryon-baryon collisions, leading to additional open-charm pairs in nucleus-nucleus collisions but not in $pA$ collisions.
We discuss the inclusive dilepton cross section for proton (quark)-nucleus collisions at high energies in the very forward rapidity region. Starting from the calculation in the quasi-classical approximation, we include low-x evolution effects in the nucleus and predict leading twist shadowing together with anomalous scaling behaviour.
Preliminary estimates suggest that excess dimuon production with invariant mass in the range 1.5 -- 2.5 GeV in nucleus-nucleus collisions can be explained on the basis of $η_c$ production. This appears to be consistent with all the peripheral and central collision data with various nuclei such as S-U at 200 GeV/nucleon except for the central collision data on Pb-Pb at 158 GeV/nucleon. Some explanations based on glueball production for Pb-Pb data are discussed.
Various QCD tests using recent results from fixed-target dimuon production experiments at Fermilab are discussed. We emphasize that clear evidence for scaling-violation in the Drell-Yan process remains to be established. Further experimental and theoretical work are needed to understand the polarization of the Drell-Yan pairs. The nuclear medium effects for dilepton productions are also discussed. In particular, the energy-loss of partons traversing nuclear medium is deduced from the Drell-Yan nuclear dependence.
In a recent Letter, Geiger presents calculations of the dilepton emission from the early stage of ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions using the parton cascade model (PCM). He shows that the $M_\perp$ scaling is not observed. In this Comment, we point out that this is largely due to a defect in the PCM.
We study the A+B -> l+ l- + jet +X process in nucleus-nucleus collisions at relativistic energies. The dilepton as well as the jet will pass through the matter produced in such collisions. The recoiling dilepton will carry information about the kinematical features of the jet, and will thus prove to be a very effective tool in isolating in-medium effects such as energy-loss and fragmentation function modifications. We estimate the contributions due to correlated charm and bottom decay and we identify a window where they are small as compared to pairs from the NLO Drell-Yan process.
We consider dilepton production in high energy proton-nucleus (and very forward nucleus-nucleus) collisions. Treating the target nucleus as a Color Glass Condensate and describing the projectile proton (nucleus) as a collection of quarks and gluons as in the parton model, we calculate the differential cross section for dilepton production in quark-nucleus scattering and show that it is very sensitive to the saturation scale characterizing the target nucleus.
We present a nonperturbative dynamical study of $e^+e^-$ production in proton- nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at SPS energies on the basis of a covariant transport approach. For p + A reactions the dilepton yield for invariant masses m $\leq $ 1.2 GeV is found to be dominated by the decays of the $η, ρ, ω$ and $Φ$ mesons in line with the findings of the CERES collaboration. For S + Au collisions at 200 GeV/A the dilepton yield is, however, dominated by $π^+π^-$ annihilation due to the high pion densities achieved. Whereas for `free' meson masses and form factors the experimental cross …
A systematic study of low mass dilepton production from $π-ρ$ interactions in a hot medium is presented. Applying finite temperature perturbation theory the dilepton rate, respectively the virtual photon rate, is computed up to order $g_ρ^2$. For dilepton masses below the $ρ$ the two-body reactions $ππ\to ργ^*$, $πρ\to πγ^*$, and the decay process $ρ\to ππγ^*$ give significant contributions. Non-equilibrium contributions to the thermal rate are estimated, including the modification of the particle distribution function with non-zero pion chemical potential. The comparison of the dilepton rate …
We demonstrate that it is possible to use the polarization of vector quarkonia, measured from dilepton event samples, as an instrument to study the suppression of chi_c and chi_b in heavy-ion collisions, where a direct determination of signal yields involving the identification of low-energy photons is essentially impossible. A change of the observed J/psi and Upsilon(1S) polarizations from proton-proton to central nucleus-nucleus collisions would directly reflect differences in the nuclear dissociation patterns of S and P states and may provide a strong indication for quarkonium sequential su…
Dilepton production in In+In collisions at 158 AGeV is studied within the microscopic parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach that incorporates explicit partonic degrees-of-freedom, dynamical hadronization as well as the more familiar hadronic dynamics in the final reaction stages. A comparison to the data of the NA60 Collaboration shows that the measured dilepton yield is well described by including the collisional broadening of vector mesons, while simultaneously accounting for the electromagnetic radiation of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) via off-shell quark…
Hadronic polarization and the related anisotropy of the dilepton angular distribution are studied for the reaction $πN \rightarrow Ne^+ e^-$. We employ consistent effective interactions for baryon resonances up to spin-5/2, where non-physical degrees of freedom are eliminated, to compute the anisotropy coefficients for isolated intermediate baryon resonances. It is shown that the spin and parity of the intermediate baryon resonance is reflected in the angular dependence of the anisotropy coefficient. We then compute the anisotropy coefficient including the $N(1520)$ and $N(1440)$ resonances, w…
We calculate the rapidity dependence of leading-order medium dilepton yields resulting from a quark-gluon plasma which has a local time-dependent anisotropy in momentum space. We present a phenomenological model which includes temporal evolution of the plasma anisotropy parameter, xi, and the hard momentum scale, p_hard. Our model interpolates between 1+1 dimensional collisionally-broadened expansion at early times and 1+1 dimensional ideal hydrodynamic expansion at late times. Using our model, we find that at LHC energies, forward high-energy medium dilepton production would be suppressed by …
We compute dilepton production from the deconfined phase of the quark-gluon plasma using leading-order (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic hydrodynamics. The anisotropic hydrodynamics equa- tions employed describe the full spatiotemporal evolution of the transverse temperature, spheroidal momentum-space anisotropy parameter, and the associated three-dimensional collective flow of the matter. The momentum-space anisotropy is also taken into account in the computation of the dilepton production rate, allowing for a self-consistent description of dilepton production from the quark-gluon plasma. For our…
We study hadronic polarization and the related anisotropy of the dilepton angular distribution for the reaction $πN \to Ne^+e^-$. We employ consistent effective interactions for baryon resonances up to spin-5/2 to compute their contribution to the anisotropy coefficient. We show that the spin and parity of the intermediate baryon resonance is reflected in the angular dependence of the anisotropy coefficient. We present results for the anisotropy coefficient including the $N(1520)$ and $N(1440)$ resonances, which are essential at the collision energy of the recent data obtained by the HADES col…
The meaningful specific anisotropy in the angle distribution of leptons with respect to the three-momentum of pair is predicted as a feasibility signature of synchrotron-like mechanism resulting from the quarks interacting with a collective confining color field in the heavy ion collisions. The lepton pair production rate and the spectrum of pair invariant mass are presented for this new dilepton source that is apparently not taken into consideration in the available phenomenological estimates.
We present dilepton spectra from nucleus-nucleus collisions at SIS energies, which were simulated with the GiBUU transport model in a resonance-model approach. These spectra are compared to the data published by the HADES collaboration. We argue that the interpretation of dilepton spectra at SIS energies critically depends on the couplings between the ρ meson and the baryonic resonances.
To investigate the high mass dilepton production cross section produced due to the Drell-Yan process in hadronic collisions such as nucleon- nucleus, the valence and sea quarks distribution functions inside nucleus is used. In this study, in the framework of the shell and Fermi gas models, by adding quarks distribution functions of pions inside nucleus besides the quarks distribution functions of bound nucleons, the changes in the dilepton production cross section were investigated. For this reason, pionic contribution in the structure function of 63Cunucleus and its EMC ratio was first studie…
Dilepton production from the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) phase of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions is computed using the leading-order (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic hydrodynamics. It is shown that high-energy dilepton spectrum is sensitive to the initial local-rest-frame momentum-space anisotropy of the QGP. Our findings suggest that it may be possible to constrain the early-time momentum-space anisotropy in relativistic heavy-ion collisions using high-energy dilepton yields.
We calculate leading-order medium photon and dilepton yields from a quark-gluon plasma using (3+1)-dimensional anisotropic hydrodynamics. In the case of dileptons, at leading-order it is sufficient to take into account non-equilibrium corrections to the rate through the use of anisotropic distribution functions. In the case of photons, non-equilibrium corrections to the rate are taken into account using a self-consistent modification of the distribution functions and the corresponding anisotropic hard-loop quark self-energies. We present predictions for the high-energy photon and dilepton spec…
We calculate leading-order dilepton yields from a quark-gluon plasma which has a time-dependent anisotropy in momentum space. Such anisotropies can arise during the earliest stages of quark-gluon plasma evolution due to the rapid longitudinal expansion of the created matter. A phenomenological model for the proper time dependence of the parton hard momentum scale, p_hard, and the plasma anisotropy parameter, xi, is proposed. The model describes the transition of the plasma from a 0+1 dimensional collisionally-broadened expansion at early times to a 0+1 dimensional ideal hydrodynamic expansion …
We calculate the yield and elliptic flow of mid-rapidity dileptons emitted from the quark-gluon plasma generated in Pb-Pb collisions at LHC. We use relativistic anisotropic hydrodynamics for the 3+1 dimensional evolution of the quark-gluon plasma and convolve this with the momentum-anisotropic local rest frame production rate for dileptons. The effects of momentum anisotropy of the quark distribution functions, viscosity to entropy density ratio, centrality of the collisions, and initial momentum anisotropy on the results are investigated and discussed.
We study Drell-Yan (DY) dilepton production in proton(deuterium)-nucleus and in nucleus-nucleus collisions within the light-cone color dipole formalism. This approach is especially suitable for predicting nuclear effects in the DY cross section for heavy ion collisions, as it provides the impact parameter dependence of nuclear shadowing and transverse momentum broadening, quantities that are not available from the standard parton model. For p(D)+A collisions we calculate nuclear shadowing and investigate nuclear modification of the DY transverse momentum distribution at RHIC and LHC for kinema…
The dilepton production is investigated in proton-nucleus collisions in the forward region using the Color Glass Condensate approach. The transverse momentum distribution ($p_T$), more precisely the low $p_T$ region, where the saturation effects are expected to increase, is analyzed. The ratio between proton-nucleus and proton-proton differential cross section for RHIC and LHC energies is evaluated, showing the effects of saturation at small $p_T$, and presenting a Cronin type peak at moderate $p_T$. These features indicate the dilepton as a most suitable probe to study the properties of the s…
We present a fully relativistic and gauge invariant framework for calculating the cross sections of dilepton production in nucleon-nucleon ($NN$) collisions which is based on the meson-exchange approximation for the $NN$ scattering amplitudes. Predictions of our model are compared with those of other covariant models that have been used earlier to describe this reaction. Our results are also compared with those of the semiclassical models which are employed to get the input elementary cross sections in the transport model calculations of the dilepton production in nucleus-nucleus collisions. I…
Partonic matter produced in the early stage of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is assumed to be composed mainly of gluons, and quarks and antiquarks are produced at later times. To study the implications of such a scenario, the dynamical evolution of a chemically nonequilibrated system is described by the ideal (2+1)-dimensional hydrodynamics with a time dependent (anti)quark fugacity. The equation of state interpolates linearly between the lattice data for the pure gluonic matter and the lattice data for the chemically equilibrated quark-gluon plasma. The spectra and elliptic flo…
Measurements of dilepton production from charm decay and Drell-Yan processes respectively probe the gluon and sea quark distributions in hadronic collisions. In nucleus-nucleus collisions, these hard scattering processes constitute a `background' to thermal contributions from the hot matter produced by the collision. To determine the magnitude and behavior of this background, we calculate the hard scattering contribution to dilepton production in nuclear collisions at RHIC and LHC at next to leading order in perturbative QCD. Invariant mass, rapidity and transverse momentum distributions are p…
Recently the NA60 collaboration has reported the transverse mass spectra of dimuons coming from In-In collisions at 158 GeV/A. The measured yields display a strong invariant mass dependence not typical of radial flow, suggesting that different sources contribute in different mass regions. We interpret the dimuon transverse mass spectra from an early thermalized partonic phase and hadronic phase constrained by the strictures of broken chiral symmetry. Each phase develops a specific transverse momentum dependence by hydrodynamical expansion. We show that a measurement of the momentum anisotropy …
The dilepton emission in heavy-ion reactions at low beam energies is examined within a hadronic transport approach. In this article the production of electron-positron pairs from a new approach named SMASH (Simulating Many Accelerated Strongly-interacting Hadrons) is introduced. The dilepton emission is consistently taken into account below the hadronic threshold. The calculations are systematically confronted with HADES data in the kinetic energy range of $1 - 3.5A$ GeV for elementary, proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus reactions. The present approach employing a resonance treatment based on …
The Parton-Hadron-String-Dynamics (PHSD) transport model is used to study the impact on the choice of initial degrees of freedom on the final hadronic and electromagnetic observables in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ = 200 GeV. We find that a non-perturbative system of massive gluons (scenario I) and a system dominated by quarks and antiquarks (scenario II) lead to different hadronic observables when imposing the same initial energy-momentum tensor $T_{μν}(x)$ just after the passage of the impinging nuclei. In case of the gluonic initial condition the formation of $s,{\bar s}$ pairs in th…
We study e+e- pair production in proton-proton and in nucleus-nucleus collisions from SIS to LHC energies within the parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) approach which incorporates explicit partonic degrees-of-freedom in terms of strongly interacting quasiparticles (quarks and gluons) in line with an equation-of-state from lattice QCD as well as the dynamical hadronization and hadronic collision dynamics in the final reaction phase. We find a visible in-medium effect in the low mass dilepton sector from dynamical vector-meson spectral functions from SIS to SPS energies whereas at RHIC and LHC…
The spectrum of dileptons produced by the quark-gluon plasma in an ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collision depends only, to a good approximation, on the transverse mass M_t of the dilepton. This scaling is exact as long as transverse flow is negligible, and the system is in local thermal equilibrium. We implement a state-of-the-art modelization of kinetic and chemical equilibration in the early stages of the evolution to study the modifications of the spectrum. Violations of M_t scaling resulting from these effects are evaluated as a function of the shear viscosity to entropy ratio (eta/s)…
The Drell-Yan (DY) process of dilepton pair production off nuclei is not affected by final state interactions, energy loss or absorption. A detailed phenomenological study of this process is thus convenient for investigation of the onset of initial-state effects in proton-nucleus ($pA$) collisions. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the DY process in $pA$ interactions at RHIC and LHC energies in the color dipole framework. We analyse several effects affecting the nuclear suppression, $R_{pA}<1$, of dilepton pairs, such as the saturation effects, restrictions imposed by energ…
A study of secondary Drell-Yan production in nuclear collisions is presented for SPS energies. In addition to the lepton pairs produced in the initial collisions of the projectile and target nucleons, we consider the potentially high dilepton yield from hard valence antiquarks in produced mesons and antibaryons. We calculate the secondary Drell-Yan contributions taking the collision spectrum of hadrons from the microscopic model URQMD. The contributions from meson-baryon interactions, small in hadron-nucleus interactions, are found to be substantial in nucleus-nucleus collisions at low dilepto…
Anisotropy in heavy-ion collisions leads to polarization of both direct and virtual photons, the latter detected via internal conversion to dileptons pairs. Thus measurement of photon polarization probes the anisotropy at all stages of collisions. In order to characterize the polarization of virtual photons, we derive here the general structure of the photon polarization operator, rho^(mu nu), in an anisotropic medium, in terms of the four spectral functions, two transverse and one longitudinal, as usual, plus a new spectral function that reflects anisotropy in asymmetric collisions; and deriv…
The production of dileptons with an invariant mass in the range 1 GeV < M < 5 GeV provides unique insight into the approach to thermal equilibrium in ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions. In this mass range, they are produced through the annihilation of quark-antiquark pairs in the early stages of the collision. They are sensitive to the anisotropy of the quark momentum distribution, and also to the quark abundance, which is expected to be underpopulated relative to thermal equilibrium. We take into account both effects based on recent theoretical developments in QCD kinetic theory, an…
The differential multiplicity of dileptons in a hot and magnetized quark-gluon plasma, $Δ_{B}\equiv dN_{B}/d^{4}xd^{4}q$, is derived from first principles. The constant magnetic field $B$ is assumed to be aligned in a fixed spatial direction. It is shown that the anisotropy induced by the $B$ field is mainly reflected in the general structure of photon spectral density function. This is related to the imaginary part of the vacuum polarization tensor, $\mbox{Im}[Π^{μν}]$, which is derived in a first order perturbative approximation. As expected, the final analytical expression for $Δ_{B}$ inclu…
We extend the analysis of 1211.2199, where the photon production rate of an anisotropic strongly coupled plasma with Nf<<Nc massless quarks was considered. We allow here for non-vanishing quark masses and study how these affect the spectral densities and conductivities. We also compute another important probe of the plasma, the dilepton production rate. We consider generic angles between the anisotropic direction and the photon and dilepton wave vectors, as well as arbitrary quark masses and arbitrary values of the anisotropy parameter. Generically, the anisotropy increases the production rate…
The McLerran-Venugopalan model describes a highly boosted hadron/nucleus as a sheet of random color charges which source soft classical Weizsäcker-Williams gluon fields. We show that due to fluctuations, individual configurations are azimuthally anisotropic. We present initial evidence that impact parameter dependent small-x JIMWLK resummation preserves such anisotropies over several units of rapidity. Finally, we compute the first four azimuthal Fourier amplitudes of the S-matrix of a fundamental dipole in such background fields.
The intensive synchrotron radiation resulting from quarks interacting with the collective confining color field in relativistic heavy ion collisions is discussed. The spectrum of photons with large transverse momentum is calculated and compared with the experimental data to demonstrate the feasibility of this type of radiation. A study of the earlier predicted azimuthal anisotropy in the angular distribution of dileptons with respect to the three-momentum of the pair is performed as well. This boundary-induced mechanism of lepton pair production is shown to possess the features that are distin…
The electromagnetic bremsstrahlung produced by a quark interacting with nucleons or nuclei is azimuthally asymmetric. In the light-cone dipole approach this effect is related to the orientation dependent dipole cross section. Such a radiation anisotropy is expected to contribute to the azimuthal asymmetry of direct photons in pA and AA collisions, as well as in DIS and in the production of dileptons.
Electromagnetic probes such as direct photons and dileptons are crucial to study the properties of a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) created in heavy ion collisions. Based on the (3+1)-dimensional event-by-event viscous hydrodynamic model EPOS 3.102, we calculated the anisotropic emission of thermal photons and dileptons in Au+Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) energy $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200$~GeV. Thermal emissions from both QGP phase and hadronic gas phase are considered, with AMY rate for photons and Lattice QCD based rates for dileptons in QGP phase. For emission from hadron ga…
We use the relativistic perfect-fluid hydrodynamics to describe the space-time evolution of dense baryonic matter produced in the central nucleus-nucleus collisions at HIRFL-CSR, HIAF, FAIR-CBM, NICA-MPD, and RHIC-BES. The transverse flow of the fireball with cylindrical symmetry and boost invariant along the longitudinal direction is also analyzed. Based on the relativistic kinetic theory, we also present the first preliminary calculation on the production of low-mass dileptons and low-pT photons can be considered as the signals of the dense baryonic matter produced in the central Au-Au and U…
In this review we address the dynamics of relativistic heavy-ion reactions and in particular the information obtained from electromagnetic probes that stem from the partonic and hadronic phases. The out-of-equilibrium description of strongly interacting relativistic fields is based on the theory of Kadanoff and Baym. For the modeling of the partonic phase we introduce a dynamical quasiparticle model (DQPM) for QCD in equilibrium. The widths and masses of the quasiparticles are controlled by transport coefficients in comparison to lattice QCD results. The resulting off-shell transport approach …
Partonic matter produced in the early stage of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is assumed to be composed mainly of gluons, and quarks and antiquarks are produced at later times. The comparable hydrodynamic simulations of heavy-ion collisions for (2+1)-flavor and Yang-Mills equations of state performed by using three different hydrodynamic codes are presented. Assuming slow chemical equilibration of quarks, the spectra and elliptic flows of thermal dileptons and photons are calculated for central Pb+Pb collisions at the LHC energy of $\sqrt{s_{_{\rm NN}}} = 2.76$ TeV. It is shown t…
A generic expression of double-parton scattering cross sections in high-energy nucleus-nucleus (A-A) collisions is derived as a function of the corresponding single-parton hard cross sections and of the A-A event centrality. We consider the case of prompt-J/psi production in lead-lead (Pb-Pb) at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and find that about 20% (35%) of the J/psi events in minimum-bias (most central) collisions contain a second J/psi from double parton interactions. In Pb-Pb at 5.5 TeV, in the absence of final-state effects, about 240 double-J/psi events are expected per unit midrapidity …
Simple power counting arguments in the dilute-dense framework of the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) Effective Field Theory predict that even and odd azimuthal anisotropy harmonics of two-particle correlations in proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC will respectively satisfy v^2_{2n} ~ N_{ch}^0 and v^2_{2n+1} ~ N_{ch}, where N_{ch} denotes the number of charged particles. We show that these expectations are borne out qualitatively, and even quantitatively, within systematic uncertainties, for v_2 and v_4 in comparisons with data from the ATLAS collaboration. We also observe that ATLAS data for th…
Studying the in-medium $ϕ$ meson spectrum through kaons in proton-nucleus reactions
Yonsei University（延世大学）；KEK, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization（高能加速器研究机构）；Japan Atomic Energy Agency（日本原子能机构）；Wigner Research Centre for Physics（维格纳物理研究中心）
We review some experimental consequences of the presence of superstrong magnetic fields of order of the nuclear scale in noncentral heavy-ion collisions. We present lattice estimates for the strength of the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) for different quark flavours and argue that the dependence of the anisotropy of the distribution of emitted hadrons on their flavor content might be used as another experimental evidence of the CME. Another possible effect of superstrong magnetic field might be the observed abnormal enhancement of dilepton yield. We show that the presence of the magnetic field l…
This work studies collinearly factorizable nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) in perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at next-to-leading order in the light of hadron-nucleus collision data which have not been included in nPDF analyses previously. The aim is at setting new constraints on the nuclear modifications of the gluon distribution and on the flavour separation of quark nuclear modifications. The introductory part provides an outline of the theoretical framework of QCD collinear factorization and the used statistical methods and relates the work presented here to other si…
We investigate the azimuthal anisotropy $v_2$ of particle production in nucleus-nucleus collisions in the maximum entropy approach. This necessitates two new phenomenological input parameters $δ$ and $λ_2$ compared with integrated multiplicity distributions. The parameter $δ$ describes the deformation of a flux tube and can be theoretically calculated in a bag model with a bag constant which depends on the density of surrounding flux tubes. The parameter $λ_2$ defines the anisotropy of the particle distribution in momentum space and can be connected to $δ$ via the uncertainty relation. In this…
