Di-electron Continuum at PHENIX

The PHENIX experiment at RHIC has been carried out to investigate the properties of QGP. Di-electron yields in p+p and Au+Au collisions have been measured. An enhancement of the yield over a hadronic cocktail calculation is clearly seen for $p_T<1.0$GeV/$c$ and $150<m_{ee}<750$MeV/$c^2$ in Au+Au collisions, while the result in p+p collisions is consistent with the calculation. The fraction of the virtual direct photon component to the di-electron yield is measured from a shape analysis using the di-electron mass distributions for $1.0<p_T<5.0$GeV/$c$ and $m_{ee}<300$MeV/$c^2$, and the real direct photon spectra are deduced from the fractions obtained for p+p and Au+Au collisions. An excess of the direct photon yield above a binary-scaled p+p result is seen in Au+Au collisions. The excess is fitted with an exponential function with an inverse slope parameter of $221\pm 23\pm 18$MeV.