Dilepton suppression as a signature for the baryon-rich quark-gluon plasma

Abstract

The dilepton yield at invariant masses between 2$m_{\pi }$ and 1 GeV is shown to be reduced substantially if a baryon-rich quark-gluon plasma is formed in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. We suggest therefore to measure the total dilepton yield in this region of invariant masses as a function of the incident energy. The onset of a baryon-rich quark-gluon plasma is then signaled by a decrease in this excitation function.