# Physical Information in the Thermal Continuum Dilepton Spectra

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 $`(\tau _i\lambda _i^qT_i^3)^2`$ 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.

The differential spectrum of dileptons from thermalized deconfined matter with respect to lepton rapidities $`y_\pm `$ and transverse momenta $`p_\pm `$ reads 

$$dN=\frac{\alpha ^2R_A^2}{4\pi ^4}F_q𝑑\tau \tau K_0\left(\frac{M_{}}{T}\right)\lambda _q^2d^2p_+d^2p_{}𝑑y_+𝑑y_{}$$
(1)   
with $`F_q=_qe_q^2=\frac{2}{3}`$ for u,d,s quarks, $`K_n`$ as modified Bessel function of $`n`$th order, and with the dilepton transverse mass $`M_{}^2=p_+^2+p_{}^2+2p_+p_{}\text{ch}(y_+y_{})`$. The integration has to be performed on the proper time $`\tau `$ of the dominantly longitudinally expanding matter with temperature $`T(\tau )`$ and quark fugacity $`\lambda (\tau )`$. Our choice of initial conditions for deconfined matter, resulting in ultrarelativistiv heavy ion collisions, is based on the estimates  for the mini-jet plasma. We take as main set of parameters the initial temperature $`T_i=`$ 1000 MeV, gluon fugacity $`\lambda _i^g=`$ 0.5, and light quark fugacity $`\lambda _i^q=\frac{1}{5}\lambda _i^g`$ of the parton plasma formed at LHC at initial time $`\tau _i=`$ 0.2 fm/c. For the sake of definiteness we assume full saturation at confinement temperature $`T_c=`$ 170 MeV and a quadratic time dependence of $`\lambda ^{q,g}(\tau )`$ according to the studies .

The thermal dilepton signal with single-electron low-momentum cut-offs $`p_{}^{\mathrm{min}}=`$ 2 – 3 GeV exhibits an approximate plateau in the invariant mass region 2 GeV $`M2p_{}^{\mathrm{min}}`$, see Fig.1, and the physical information encoded in the height of the plateau can be estimated by

$$\frac{dN}{dM^2dY}=3\frac{\alpha ^2R_A^2}{4\pi ^2}F_q(\tau _i\lambda _i^qT_i^3)^2\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}_{2p_{}^{\mathrm{min}}/T_i}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑x\left(\frac{8}{x^2}+1\right)K_3(x)\frac{x2p_{}^{\mathrm{min}}/T_i}{\sqrt{x^2(M/T_i)^2}}.$$
(2)   
The height of the plateau depends sensitively on the initial temperature $`T_i`$ and quark fugacity $`\lambda _i^q`$. This dependence can be used to get physical information on the early and hot test stage of the parton matter. In particular, a variation of the initial temperature within the interval 0.8 – 1.2 GeV, expected as possible range of parton matter formed at LHC energies, leads to a considerable change of the plateau height up to an order of magnitude. Therefore, once an identification and a measurement of the thermal dilepton spectrum in the intermediate mass continuum spectrum is possible , it delivers some implicit information on the initial thermodynamic state parameters of the parton matter.

As demonstrated recently , the measurement of double differential dilepton spectra as a function of the transverse pair momentum $`Q_{}`$ and transverse mass $`M_{}=\sqrt{M^2+Q_{}^2}`$ within a narrow interval of $`M_{}`$ also offers the chance to observe thermal dileptons at LHC. Integrating the rate eq. (1) over the parton momenta and space-time evolution results approximately in a dilepton spectrum

$$\frac{dN_{e^+e^{}}}{dYdM_{}^2dQ_{}^2}\frac{3\alpha ^2R_A^2F_q}{4\pi ^2}\left(\frac{\tau _i\lambda _i^qT_i^3}{M_{}^3}\right)^2H\left(\frac{M_{}}{T_i}\right)$$
(3)   
with $`H(x)=x^3(8+x^2)K_3(x)`$. Eq. (3) has the structure $`f_1(\tau _i\lambda _i^q)f_2(M_{}/T_i)`$, therefore one can infer from it the value of $`T_i`$ by measuring the ratio of the transverse rates at two distinct values of $`M_{}`$, see Fig.2. Afterwards, the combination $`\tau _i\lambda _i^q`$ can be extracted. If one could constrain by other means the initial time of the thermalized era, $`\tau _i`$, then even eq. (3) would allow to estimate the initial fugacity $`\lambda _i^q`$. In doing so, quite different values of $`M_{}`$ are favourable.

In spite of the experimental efforts needed for such a measurement, the direct identification of a temperature scale of $``$ 1 GeV is very challenging because it is far beyond the typical hadron freeze-out scales of $`𝒪(M_\pi )`$.