Rho Meson Broadening in Hot and Dense Hadronic Matter

Abstract

The modification of the width of rho mesons due to in-medium decays and collisions is evaluated. The decay width is calculated from the imaginary part of the one-loop self-energy at finite temperature. The collision width is related to the cross sections of the $ρ$ + pion and the $ρ$ + nucleon reactions. A calculation based on an effective Lagrangian shows the importance of including the direct $ρπ\toρπ$ scattering which is dominated by the $a_1$ exchange. A large broadening of the spectral function is found, accompanied by a strength suppression at the pole.

18 pages, 6 Postscript figures, revised version