  Dilepton and photon production in heavy-ion collisions at SPS energies are
studied in the relativistic transport model that incorporates self-consistently
the change of hadron masses in dense matter. It is found that the dilepton
spectra in proton-nucleus reactions can be well described by the conventional
mechanism of Dalitz decay and direct vector meson decay. However, to provide a
quantitative explanation of the observed dilepton spectra in central heavy-ion
collisions requires contributions other than these direct decays and also
various medium effects. Introducing a decrease of vector meson masses in hot
dense medium, we find that these heavy-ion data can be satisfactorily
explained. Furthermore, the single photon spectra in our calculations with
either free or in-medium meson masses do not exceed the upper bound deduced
from the experiments by the WA80 Collaboration.
