THERMAL DIMUONS AT RHIC ENERGIES

We calculate the dimuon production rate from a thermalized quark-gluon plasma in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies. Higher-order QCD cor rections are included by using an analytical correction factor K-(i), which gives very good agreement with experimental Drell-Yan data, and predicts a large enhancement of the thermal dimuon emission over the l owest order rates. We compare the thermal dimuon yields with the expec ted production from open-charm decays and Drell-Yan background and ass ess the prospects of observing thermal dimuons from the quark-gluon-pl asma at invariant masses of a few GeV.