Properties of hadrons in strongly interacting matter

Properties of hadrons in strongly interacting matter provide a link between quantum chromodynamics in the strong coupling regime and experimental observables. Heavy-ion collisions and reactions with elementary probes have been used to extract information on in-medium properties of hadrons. In-medium mass distributions of light vector mesons (ρ, ω, φ) have been deduced from the 4-momentum vectors of their decay products. Light vector mesons are particularly suited for these studies since their decay lengths are comparable to nuclear dimensions so that a sizable fraction of their decays occur in the nuclear environment after production in some nuclear reaction. The results obtained in a series of experiments are summarized and compared