Greg Jackson, University of Bern (previously UCT), will give a talk in the Physics Department, entitled, "Shedding light on photon and dilepton spectral functions".

Photons and dileptons produced in heavy ion collisions are 'clean' probes of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) because they are unlikely to reinteract once formed. Their emission rates are given by a particular spectral function that can ultimately be reconstructed from numerical lattice simulations. To scrutinise the ensuing systematic uncertainties, I will present recent progress from perturbation theory: The resummed spectral functions can now be calculated in all domains that affect the associated imaginary-time correlator. Confronting these new results with lattice data helps us predict how brightly the QGP shines at relevant temperatures.