An earlier measurement of the r 0 mass in the nuclear medium, reported by the TAGX Collaboration, indicated a substantial mass reduction of dm r 0 160 MeV͞c 2 in the 3 He͑g, p 1 p 2 ͒ reaction. In this Letter, we report the reanalysis of previously published data for the same reaction at lower photon energies, E g 380 700 MeV, which lie below the r 0 ! p 1 p 2 detection threshold unless the r 0 mass is significantly modified by the nuclear medium. We find the resulting mass shift in this region to be even larger, dm r 0 280 6 40 MeV͞c 2 , consistent with r 0 decay in the field of the nucleon as the dominant effect. [S0031-9007(98)06384-4] PACS numbers: 24.85.+p, 12.40.Yx, 25.20.Lj It has been established by chiral perturbation theory ͑xPT ͒ that, at infinite nuclear matter density, deconfinement of the quarks takes place and hadron masses are reduced to zero. Correspondingly, at some high nuclear matter density r c , partial restoration of chiral symmetry takes place [1]. One of the consequences of this restoration is a reduction of the vector meson masses within the nuclear medium, a topic that has been the focus of intense interest within the theoretical community, as outlined in a recent review [2]. There is qualitative agreement among most theoretical predictions that the renormalized vector meson mass is reduced in the nuclear medium.Several heavy ion collider experiments at CERN (CERES, HELIOS, and NA28), leading to dilepton production, indicate an enhanced production cross section in the lower dilepton invariant mass range of 200 600 MeV͞c 2 [3]. The spectral shapes are not well reproduced by theoretical calculations based on hadron decay after freeze out when employing free particle properties. The dominant p 1 p 2 annihilation mechanism fails to account for the observed excess dilepton production, and better agreement is found if the r 0 mass is modified [4], according to the scaling hypothesis of Brown and Rho [5], or according to quark sum rules (QSR) predictions [6]. Alternate explanations have been proposed [7] which also depend on a decrease of the r 0 meson mass. However, theoretical issues still remain open in such complex reactions [3].An IUCF experiment has reported evidence of a substantially reduced m ء r 0 , using polarized proton scattering on 28 Si [8]. An improvement between the data and calculations was observed if the r 0 mass is reduced by 20% in nuclear matter. This improvement, however, did not carry through to all of the observables. Questions can be raised regarding the interpretation of this result, such as the definition of mass when the r 0 is in the propagator, as well as the issue of r 0 -v interference, and the effect of the medium on the v mass. Recent Bonn results also indicate a significant reduction in the total photoabsorption cross section per nucleon on various nuclei [9], which could be explained by a corresponding decrease of the r 0 mass in nuclear medium. All such evidence of a r 0 mass renormalization is, however, indirect and inconclusive.A more conclusive an...