Dielectron production in proton-proton and proton-deuteron collisions at 1–2 GeV

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Estimates of elementary cross sections for dielectron production in pN and pd reactions are presented. Throughout, we use the vector dominance model for all hadron-hadron-photon vertices. The Δ,η Dalitz decays and bremsstrahlung appears as dominant sources of dielectrons. We show that the recently observed strong enhancement from 2 of the ratio of dielectron production from pd to pp collision at low energy E∼1.0–1.3 GeV may be understood by a different threshold behavior of eta production in proton-proton and proton-neutron collisions. Relying on a realistic deuteron wave function we estimate the energy dependence of the ratio and find qualitative agreement with new experimental results.