Enhanced Production of Low-Mass Electron-Positron Pairs in 40-<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>A</mml:mi></mml:math>GeV Pb-Au Collisions at the CERN SPS

We report on first measurements of low-mass electron-positron pairs in Pb-Au collisions at the CERN SPS beam energy of 40 AGeV. The observed pair yield integrated over the range of invariant masses 0.2<m</=1 GeV/c(2) is enhanced over the expectation from neutral meson decays by a factor of 5.9+/-1.5(stat)+/-1.2(syst data)+/-1.8(syst meson decays), somewhat larger than previously observed at the higher energy of 158 AGeV. The results are discussed with reference to model calculations based on pi(+)pi(-)-->e(+)e(-) annihilation with a modified rho propagator. They may be linked to chiral symmetry restoration and support the notion that the in-medium modifications of the rho are more driven by baryon density than by temperature.