T. Peitzmann — Page 2

arXiv2000

Direct Photon Production in 158 AGeV Pb+Pb Collisions

A measurement of direct photon production in Pb+Pb collisions at 158 AGeV has been carried out in the CERN WA98 experiment. The invariant yield of direct photons in central collisions is extracted as a function of transverse momentum in the interval 0.5 < pT < 4 GeV/c. A significant direct photon signal, compared to statistical and systematical errors, is seen at pT > 1.5 GeV/c. The results constitute the first observation of direct photons in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions which could be significant for diagnosis of quark gluon plasma formation.

nucl-ex↗

arXiv1997

Comment on: ``Search for direct photons from S-Au Collisions at 200 GeV/nucleon'' by the CERES Collaboration

In this note we comment on a recent publication in this journal by the CERES (NA45) Collaboration. The authors report to have determined an upper limit on the direct photon yield relative to the decay photon yield in S+Au collisions of 14 % and 7 % by two different methods, respectively. We argue that these limits are unsupported by the results and analysis of the CERES data. The systematic error estimates quoted in the CERES analysis are consistently overly optimistic. Using more realistic estimates of the various error contributions and propagating them appropriately we arrive at a direct photon upper limit which at best is 20% of the inclusive photon yield, and most probably is much higher.

hep-ph↗