Signals of a disoriented chiral condensate

Abstract

If a disoriented chiral condensate is created over an extended space-time region following a rapid cooling in hadronic or nuclear collisions, the misalignment of the condensate with the electroweak symmetry breaking can generate observable effects in the processes which involve both strong and electromagnetic interactions. We point out the relevance of the dilepton decay of light vector mesons as a signal for the formation of the disoriented condensate. We predict that the decay ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\rho}}}^{0}$\ensuremath{\rightarrow}${\mathit{l}}^{+}$${\mathit{l}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}$ will be suppressed and/or the \ensuremath{\rho} resonance peak widens, while the decay \ensuremath{\omega}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}${\mathit{l}}^{+}$${\mathit{l}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}}$ will not be affected by the condensate.