Hadronic production of thermal photons

We study the thermal emission of photons from hot and dense strongly interacting hadronic matter at temperatures close to the expected phase transition to the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Earlier calculations of photon radiation from ensembles of interacting mesons are reexamined with additional constraints, including new production channels as well as an assessment of hadronic form factor effects. Whereas strangeness-induced photon yields turn out to be moderate, the hitherto not considered $t$-channel exchange of $\omega$ mesons is found to contribute appreciably for photon energies above $\sim 1.5\text{GeV}$. The role of baryonic effects is assessed using existing many-body calculations of lepton pair production. We argue that our combined results constitute a rather realistic emission rate, appropriate for applications in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Supplemented with recent evaluations of QGP emission, and an estimate for primordial (hard) production, we compute photon spectra at Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies.