2000/06/30 by Dinesh Kumar Srivastava, Bikash Sinha · 8 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Annihilation #Gluon #Hadron #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear matter #Nuclear physics #Nucleon #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Photon #Physics #Plasma #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quark #Quark–gluon plasma #Strange matter #hep-ph #nucl-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevc.64.034902
published as Phys.Rev. C64 (2001) 034902 · 6 pages including 3 figures. Corrected 2-loop rates for photons are used
arxiv created 2001/03/12 · openalex publication_date 2001/08/20 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The production of single photons in Pb+Pb collisions at relativistic energies as measured by the WA98 experiment is analyzed. A quark-gluon plasma is assumed to be formed initially, which expands, cools, hadronizes, and undergoes freeze-out. A rich hadronic equation of state is used and the transverse expansion of the interacting system is taken into account. The recent estimates of photon production in quark matter (at the two-loop level) along with the dominant reactions in the hadronic matter leading to photons are used. About 50% of the single photons are seen to have a thermal origin. An addition of the thermal and prompt photons is seen to provide a very good description of the data. Most of the thermal photons having large transverse momenta arise from the quark matter, which contributes dominantly through the mechanism of annihilation of quarks with scattering, and which in turn is possible only in a hot and dense plasma of quarks and gluons. The results are thus compatible with the formation of quark-gluon plasma and the existence of this mechanism of the production of single photons.