Thermal dileptons from quark and hadron phases of an expanding fireball

Abstract:A fireball model with time evolution based on transport calculations is used to examine the dilepton emission rate of an ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collision. A transition from hadronic matter to a quark-gluon plasma at a critical temperature TC between 130-170 MeV is assumed. We also consider a possible mixed phase scenario. We include thermal corrections to the hadronic spectra below TC and use perturbation theory above TC. The sensitivity of the spectra with respect to the freeze-out temperature, the initial fireball temperature and the critical temperature is investigated.