Intermediate mass dimuons in NA38/NA50

The NA38/NA50 experiments have measured, at the CERN SPS, the dimuon production in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions. In this paper it is shown that the mass continuum between the $\phi$ and the $J/{\psi}$ can be satisfactorily described, after having removed the combinatorial background due to uncorrelated $\pi$ and $K$ decays, as a sum of two contributions, namely the Drell-Yan process and the semi-leptonic decay of pairs of charmed mesons, whose mass shape in the acceptance of the experiment has been evaluated using PYTHIA. However, in order to describe the A - B (namely S - U and Pb - Pb) mass spectra, the dimuon yield from open charm decays, which in $p$ - A collisions is found to be consistent with direct open charm measurements from other CERN and FNAL experiments, has to be enhanced with respect to a linear extrapolation of $p$ - A results. The size of the enhancement smoothly increases from peripheral S - U to central Pb - Pb interactions, reaching a factor $\sim$ 3 in central Pb - Pb collisions. The $P_{T}$ distributions of the events in the mass continuum are also compatible with the hypothesis of open charm enhancement in A - B collisions.