Rho Meson Broadening in Hot and Dense Hadronic Matter

The rho and omega meson self-energy at finite temperature and baryon density have been analysed for an exhaustive set of mesonic and baryonic loops in the real time formulation of thermal field theory. The large enhancement of spectral strength below the nominal rho mass is seen to cause a substantial enhancement in dilepton pair yield in this mass region. The integrated yield after space-time evolution using relativistic hydrodynamics with quark gluon plasma in the initial s...

The modifications of hadronic masses and decay widths at finite temperature and baryon density are investigated using a phenomenological model of hadronic interactions in the Relativistic Hartree Approximation. We consider an exhaustive set of hadronic reactions and vector meson decays to estimate the photon emission from hot and dense hadronic matter. The reduction in the vector meson masses and decay widths is seen to cause an enhancement in the photon production. It is obs...

Technical concepts are presented that improve the selfconsistent treatment of vector-mesons in a hot and dense medium. First applications concern an interacting gas of pions and rho mesons. As an extension of earlier studies we thereby include RPA-type vertex corrections and further use dispersion relations in order to calculate the real part of the vector-meson selfenergy. An improved projection method preserves the four transversality of the vector-meson polarisation tensor...

We present preliminary results on the $\rho$ meson decay width from $N_f=2+1$ full QCD configurations generated by PACS-CS Collaboration. The decay width is estimated from the $P$-wave scattering phase shift for the isospin $I=1$ two-pion system. The finite size formula presented by L\"uscher in the center of mass frame and its extension to non-zero total momentum frame by Rummukainen and Gottlieb are employed for the calculations of the phase shift. Our calculations are carr...

Rho meson propagation in hot hadronic matter is studied in a model with coupling to $\pi\pi$ states. Medium modifications are induced by a change of the pion dispersion relation through collisions with nucleons and $\Delta's$ in the fireball. Maintaining gauge invariance dilepton production is calculated and compared to the recent data of the CERES collaboration in central S+Au collisions at 200 GeV/u. The observed enhancement of the rate below the rho meson mass can be large...

Temperature dependence of hadronic decay widths and masses are studied within the framework of an effective Lagrangian approach. At finite temperature the hadronic masses do not seem to follow a universal scaling law. Considering an exhaustive set of hadronic reactions and vector meson decays we have estimated the photon spectrum emitted from hot hadronic matter taking into account medium effects through thermal loop corrections on the hadronic decay widths and masses. An enh...

We analyse the structure of one-loop self-energy graphs for the rho meson in real time formulation of finite temperature field theory. We find the discontinuities of these graphs across the unitary and the Landau cuts. These contributions are identified with different sources of medium modification discussed in the literature. We also calculate numerically the imaginary and the real parts of the self-energies and construct the spectral function of the rho meson, which are com...

In this write-up we summarize main results of our recent analyses on the mixing between transverse rho and a1 mesons in hot and/or dense matter. We show that the axial-vector meson contributes significantly to the vector spectral function in hot matter through the mixing. In dense baryonic matter, we include a mixing through a set of omega rho a1 -type interactions. We show that a clear enhancement of the vector spectral function appears below \sqrt{s}=m_\rho for small three-...

We present a lattice QCD calculation of the $\rho$ meson decay width via the $P$-wave scattering phase shift for the I=1 two-pion system. Our calculation uses full QCD gauge configurations for $N_f=2$ flavors generated using a renormalization group improved gauge action and an improved Wilson fermion action on a $12^3\times24$ lattice at $m_\pi/m_\rho=0.41$ and the lattice spacing $1/a=0.92 {\rm GeV}$. The phase shift calculated with the use of the finite size formula for the...

Nota bene: the numerical calculation underlying Version 1 of this reply and the original work Phys.Rev. C71:064903,2005 contains a basic numerical error (wrong factor in the self-energy formulas of Phys. Rev.C71:064903,2005). This renders the numerical results presented there and in Version 1 of the reply invalid and enforces a careful reinvestigation of Phys. Rev.C71:064903,2005 and the reply. Calculations for an erratum of Phys. Rev. C71:064903,2005 are in progress.