Rho Meson Broadening in Hot and Dense Hadronic Matter

We calculate the momentum dependence of the $\rho$-meson selfenergy based on the dispersion relation for the $\rho N$ scattering amplitude $f(\omega$) at low nuclear density. The imaginary part of $f(\omega)$ is determined from the optical theorem, while the total $\rho N$ cross section is obtained within the VDM at high energy and within the resonance model at low energy. Our numerical results indicate a sizeable broadening of the $\rho$-meson width in the medium especially ...

Our recent work on modifications of rho-mesons formed at the last stage of evolution of hadronic matter produced in heavy ion collisions is summarized. It is found that while the mass shift is on the order of a few tens of MeV, the width and spectral density become so broad that rho may lose its identity as a well defined resonance.

The NA60 experiment has studied low-mass muon pair production in In-In collisions at $158 {\rm AGeV}$ 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...

We study the influence of the finite damping width of pions on the in-medium properties of the rho-meson in an interacting meson gas model at finite temperature. Using vector dominance also implications on the resulting dilepton spectra from the decay of the rho-meson are presented. A set of coupled Dyson equations with self energies up to the sunset diagram level is solved self consistently. Following a Phi-derivable scheme the self energies are dynamically determined by the...

A realistic model for the free rho meson with coupling to two-pion states is employed to calculate the rho propagator in a hot and dense hadron gas. The medium modifications are based on hadronic rescattering processes: intermediate two-pion states are renormalized through interactions with surrounding nucleons and deltas, and rho meson scattering is considered off nucleons, deltas, pions and kaons. Constraints from gauge invariance as well as the full off-shell dynamics of t...

We study the $\rho$-meson spectral function in hot nuclear matter by taking into account the isospin-symmetric pion and the nucleon loops within the quantum hadrodynamics (QHD) model as well as using an effective chiral SU(3) model. The spectral function of the $\rho$ meson is studied in the mean field approximation (MFA) as well as in the relativistic Hartree (RHA) approximation. The inclusion of the nucleon loop considerably changes the $\rho$-meson spectral function. Due t...

Recent measurements of the pi^+pi^- invariant mass distribution at RHIC show a shifted peak for the rho meson in 100A GeV in peripheral Au + Au and even in p + p collisions. A recent theoretical study based on a picture of in-medium production rates of pions, showed that a large shift could result from a combination of the Boltzmann factor and the collisional broadening of the rho. Here we argue that the two-pion density of states is the appropriate quantity if one assumes a ...

The one loop self energy of the neutral $\rho$ meson is obtained for the effective $\rho\pi\pi$ and $\rho NN$ interaction at finite temperature and density in the presence of a constant background magnetic field of arbitrary strength. In our approach, the eB-dependent vacuum part of the self energy is extracted by means of dimensional regularization where the ultraviolet divergences corresponding to the pure vacuum self energy manifest as the pole singularities of gamma as we...

The mass shift and width broadening of $\rho$-mesons produced in heavy ion collisions is estimated. It is found that the mass increases by some tens of MeV but the width becomes large, increasing by 200 MeV at beam energies of a few GeV$\cdot$A and by twice that amount at beam energies of about a hundred GeV$\cdot$A.

The structure of the one loop self-energy graphs of the $\rho$ meson is analyzed in the real time formulation of thermal field theory. The modified spectral function of the $\rho$ meson in hot hadronic matter leads to a large enhancement of lepton pair production below the bare peak of the $\rho$. It has been shown that the effective temperature extracted from the inverse slope of the transverse momentum distributions for various invariant mass ($M$) windows of the pair can b...