Dimuon production in p-A, S-U and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN-SPS has been studied by the NA38/NA50 collaboration. A 4-D unfolding method has been applied to the data to study the intermediate mass region (IMR) between 1.6 and 2.5 GeV/c(2). The superposition of conventional processes, namely Drell-Yan and open charm, extrapolated from p-A distributions is unable to describe the overproduction observed in the ion data. Medium effects or D-meson rescattering cannot account for the experimental results. Two possible explanations of the observed excess, namely an enhancement of charm production or the presence of thermal dilepton radiation, are also discussed.
Enhancement of intermediate mass dimuons in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the CERN-SPS
DE FALCO, ALESSANDRO
2002-01-01
Abstract
Dimuon production in p-A, S-U and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN-SPS has been studied by the NA38/NA50 collaboration. A 4-D unfolding method has been applied to the data to study the intermediate mass region (IMR) between 1.6 and 2.5 GeV/c(2). The superposition of conventional processes, namely Drell-Yan and open charm, extrapolated from p-A distributions is unable to describe the overproduction observed in the ion data. Medium effects or D-meson rescattering cannot account for the experimental results. Two possible explanations of the observed excess, namely an enhancement of charm production or the presence of thermal dilepton radiation, are also discussed.
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