Dileptons from Disoriented Chiral Condensates

Abstract

Disoriented chiral condensates or long wavelength pionic oscillations and their interaction with the thermal environment can be a significant source of dileptons. We calculate the yield of such dilepton production within the linear sigma model, both in a quantal mean-field treatment and in a semi-classical approximation. We then illustrate the basic features of the dilepton spectrum in a schematic model. We find that dilepton yield with invariant mass near and below $2m_π$ due to the soft pion modes can be up to two orders of magnitude larger than the corresponding equilibrium yield.

22 pages, 8 figures, uses epsf-style