PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

We study the thermal production of low mass dielectrons in central nucleus-nucleus collisions at LHC energy. We assume initial quark-gluon plasma production, followed by a first order quark-hadron phase transition and subsequent hadronization; the expansion of the system is described by Bjorken's hydrodynamical model. In the quark-gluon plasma, we include both the basic qqBAR annihilation process and lowest order QED and QCD corrections. In the hadronic phase, we consider pion annihilation as well as pion scattering with virtual bremsstrahlung leading to dielectron production. Our results are then compared to dielectron rates from pi-0 and eta Dalitz decays. We conclude that it will be rather difficult to disentangle the quark-gluon plasma contributions from competing dielectron production processes.