Physical information in the thermal continuum dilepton spectra

Abstract We consider the intermediate mass continuum of dileptons (between Φ and J1ψ) in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. The thermal signal depends essentially on thermodynamic state parameters of the hottest parton stage as (τiλiqTi3)2 convoluted with an involved detector acceptance function. A refined analysis of the transverse pair momentum spectrum at fixed dilepton transverse mass can reveal the maximum temperature of parton matter.