ONE-BOSON-EXCHANGE APPROACH TO DILEPTON PRODUCTION IN NUCLEON NUCLEON COLLISIONS

We calculate energy-dependent nucleon-nucleon elastic eross sections and electron-positron pair production differential cross sections for the processes pp→pp, np→np, and pp→ppe+e-, np→npe+e- at laboratory kinetic energies in the 1-5 GeV range. These calculations will be based on a one-boson-exchange (π, ρ{variant}, ω, σ, δ, η) approximation to the nucleonnucleon scattering problem. Strong form factors are included in a manner which preserves gauge invariance. We find excellent results as compared with data for the total elastic cross sections. The calculated differential elastic cross sections show only qualitative agreement with data. For dilepton production in n-p scattering the model overestimates the number of pairs as compared with proton on beryllium data. For the p-p case we find the tensor coupling of the ρ{variant} to the nucleons to be clearly dominant. Data do not yet exist for the p-p case at these energies: we predict them. © 1991.