E. Shuryak, CAN DILEPTONS BE OBSERVED IN HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS AT RELATIVISTIC HEAVY-ION COLLIDER ENERGIES, Physical review. C. Nuclear physics, 55(2), 1997, pp. 961-963
Both dilepton and charm production at RHIC are considered to be import
ant signatures for quark-gluon plasma production. Recently it was argu
ed by Gavin et al. that the background from semileptonic correlated ch
arm decays is so large that it makes dilepton measurements virtually i
mpossible. We show that this conclusion is in fact reversed if the ene
rgy loss due to a secondary interaction of charmed quarks is included.