We report on a precision measurement of low-mass muon pairs in 158 AGeV indium-indium collisions at the CERN SPS. A significant excess of pairs is observed above the yield expected from neutral meson ...decays. The unprecedented sample size of 360,000 dimuons and the good mass resolution of about 2% allow us to isolate the excess by subtraction of the decay sources. The shape of the resulting mass spectrum is consistent with a dominant contribution from pi+pi- -->rho -->mu+mu- annihilation. The associated space-time averaged spectral function shows a strong broadening, but essentially no shift in mass. This may rule out theoretical models linking hadron masses directly to the chiral condensate.
NA60 is an experiment at the CERN-SPS devoted to the study of dimuon production in heavy-ion and proton-nucleus collisions. The main topics under study are low mass vector meson production, ...J/\(\psi\) production and suppression, and the sources of the dimuon continuum in the mass range 1.2-2.7 GeV/c2. In 2003, NA60 collected \(\sim 230\) million dimuon events from Indium-Indium collisions. We present preliminary results of the analysis of this data sample in view of measuring the open charm contribution to the dimuon spectrum. Although we are still working on the final background subtraction procedure, we can already demonstrate that the detector performance is good enough to allow the separation of prompt dimuons from muon pairs originating in distant D \(\overline{\rm D}\) decays.
NA60 results on thermal dimuons Arnaldi, R.; Banicz, K.; Borer, K. ...
European physical journal. C, Particles and fields,
06/2009, Letnik:
61, Številka:
4
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The NA60 experiment at the CERN SPS has measured muon pairs with unprecedented precision in 158
A
GeV In–In collisions. A strong excess of pairs above the known sources is observed in the whole ...mass region 0.2<
M
<2.6 GeV. The mass spectrum for
M
<1 GeV is consistent with a dominant contribution from
π
+
π
−
→
ρ
→
μ
+
μ
−
annihilation. The associated
ρ
spectral function shows a strong broadening, but essentially no shift in mass. For
M
>1 GeV, the excess is found to be prompt, not due to enhanced charm production, with pronounced differences to Drell–Yan pairs. The slope parameter
T
eff
associated with the transverse momentum spectra rises with mass up to the
ρ
, followed by a sudden decline above. The rise for
M
<1 GeV is consistent with radial flow of a hadronic emission source. The seeming absence of significant flow for
M
>1 GeV and its relation to parton–hadron duality is discussed in detail, suggesting a dominantly partonic emission source in this region. A comparison of the data to the present status of theoretical modeling is also contained. The accumulated empirical evidence, including also a Planck-like shape of the mass spectra at low
p
T
and the lack of polarization, is consistent with a global interpretation of the excess dimuons as thermal radiation. We conclude with first results on
ω
in-medium effects.
ϕ production in p-A and In-In collisions De Falco, Alessandro; Arnaldi, R.; Averbeck, R. ...
Nuclear Physics A,
2006, Letnik:
774
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Recenzirano
The NA60 experiment studied
ϕ meson production in p-A and In-In collisions at the CERN SPS. The ratio
ϕ
/
ω
shows an increase by a factor ∼2 from peripheral to central collisions. The inverse slope ...parameter T of the
p
T
spectrum increases with centrality, and seems to agree with the previous NA49 measurements.
The NA60 experiment has studied J/ψ production in p–A collisions at 158 and 400 GeV, at the CERN SPS. Nuclear effects on the J/ψ yield have been estimated from the A-dependence of the production ...cross section ratios σJ/ψA/σJ/ψBe (A=Al, Cu, In, W, Pb, U). We observe a significant nuclear suppression of the J/ψ yield per nucleon–nucleon collision, with a larger effect at lower incident energy, and we compare this result with previous observations by other fixed-target experiments. An attempt to disentangle the different contributions to the observed suppression has been carried out by studying the dependence of nuclear effects on x2, the fraction of the nucleon momentum carried by the interacting parton in the target nucleus.
During the June 2002 run NA60 collected around 600 000 dimuon triggers in proton-nucleus collisions at 400 GeV. We show that the collected dimuon mass spectra can be understood in terms of known ...sources. The specific target setup, consisting of Beryllium, Indium and Lead targets, simultaneously exposed to the beam, allowed us to study the nuclear dependence of the production cross-section of the \(\omega\) and \(\phi\) resonances. The elementary nucleon-nucleon production cross-sections at 400 GeV for the \(\rho\), \(\omega\) and \(\phi\) mesons are also presented. By using the \(\eta\)-Dalitz decay, dominating the mass range below 450 MeV, we, furthermore, extracted the \(\eta\) production cross-section and its nuclear dependence. The results are discussed in the framework of previous measurements, mostly obtained in different decay channels, performed by NA27, HELIOS-1 and CERES-TAPS.
The production of $\rho$ , $\omega$ and $\phi$ vector-mesons, detected through their $\mu\mu$ decay channel, is studied in p-W, S-S, S-Cu and S-U reactions at 200 GeV/c per nucleon incident momentum. ...Their inclusive cross-sections are determined in various transverse momentum intervals and their dependence on the projectile and target mass numbers is investigated. The relative yield $B_{\mu\mu}\sigma_{\phi}/(B_{\mu\mu}\sigma_{\rho} + B_{\mu\mu}\sigma_{\omega})$ is measured, both as a function of the transverse momentum, pT, and of the collision centrality. While this ratio exhibits no significant dependence with pT, it clearly increases with the centrality of the collision. Effective temperatures deduced from the transverse mass spectra, $d\sigma/dM_T$ , lead to values of $T_{\rho + \omega}$ equal or slightly higher than $T_{\phi}$ . Both these effective temperatures smoothly increase from p-W to S-U reactions.
The NA60 experiment studies muon pair production at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron. In this Letter we report on a precision measurement of J/psi in In-In collisions. We have studied the J/psi ...centrality distribution, and we have compared it with the one expected if absorption in cold nuclear matter were the only active suppression mechanism. For collisions involving more than approximately 80 participant nucleons, we find that an extra suppression is present. This result is in qualitative agreement with previous Pb-Pb measurements by the NA50 experiment, but no theoretical explanation is presently able to coherently describe both results.
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