Dilepton production in nucleon-nucleon collisions around 1 GeV/nucleon: a theoretical update

TL;DR

This paper develops a relativistic, gauge-invariant model for dilepton production in nucleon-nucleon collisions at around 1 GeV/nucleon, comparing its predictions with experimental data and other models.

Contribution

It introduces a new covariant, gauge-invariant framework based on meson-exchange for calculating dilepton production cross sections in NN collisions.

Findings

Model agrees well with DLS and HADES data

Provides a consistent relativistic approach

Compared favorably with existing covariant models

Abstract

We present a fully relativistic and gauge invariant framework for calculating the cross sections of dilepton production in nucleon-nucleon (NN) collisions which is based on the meson-exchange approximation for the NN scattering amplitudes. Predictions of our model are compared with those of other covariant models that have been used to describe this reaction. We discuss the comparison of our calculations with the old DLS and the recent HADES data.