Study of Dilepton Production in Nuclear Collisions with the Dilepton Spectrometer
Abstract
The DiLepton Spectrometer was created to study e+e- dielectron pairs
emitted in nuclear collisions. Direct dilepton pairs are an excellent probe of
the hot, dense matter created in nuclear collisions because they do not interact
with other particles upon emerging from this environment. The experiment
is carried out at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory with the use of the BEVALAC
accelerator. The BEVALAC is capable of accelerating protons to a kinetic
energy of 4.9 GeV and large nuclei, such as niobium, to 1.0 GeV. Presently,
this particular energy region is of interest because of the small amount of
experimental data available in this region and the unusual structures
observed in the available data. At present, no theory has been developed
which completely explains the experimental results.