φ production in Pb–Pb collisions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon incident momentum

The production of vector mesons φ, ρ and ω has been measured in Pb–Pb collisions at 158 GeV/c per nucleon incident momentum at the CERN/SPS. The muon spectrometer of experiment NA50 detects φ, ρ and ω mesons via their μ+μ− decay channel in the collision center of mass rapidity range 0⩽yCM⩽1. The results reported here show that the relative production of the φ compared to the (ρ+ω) and the φ multiplicity per participant nucleon (Npart) increase with the centrality of the collision. On the other hand, the (ρ+ω) multiplicity per participant does not exhibit any Npart dependence within our errors. The inverse slope parameter as deduced from an exponential fit to the φ transverse mass distribution is 228±10 MeV. Our results are compared with those obtained by experiment NA49 and with theoretical calculations.