PHOTONS FROM HADRONIC MATTER AT FINITE-TEMPERATURE

Temperature dependence of hadronic decay widths and masses are studied within the framework of an effective Lagrangian approach. At finite t emperature the hadronic masses do not seem to follow a universal scali ng law. Considering an exhaustive set of hadronic reactions and vector meson decays we have estimated the photon spectrum emitted from hot h adronic matter taking into account medium effects through thermal loop corrections on the hadronic decay widths and masses. An enhancement i n photon emission rate is obtained when we use the in-medium masses of vector mesons in our calculations. It is observed that the effect of rho decay width on the photon spectra is negligible. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.