Dielectron production at 1-2 AGeV with HADES Original Research Article

The main goal of the HADES experiment is to study dielectron production in proton, pion and heavy-ion induced reactions using elementary and nuclear targets. At beam energies 1 – 2 AGeV the dominant sources of pairs are decays of π0 and η mesons, NN bremsstrahlung and radiation from baryonic resonances. The vector mesons ρ, ω are created in heavy-ion collisions below or at the production threshold. As a consequence, off-shell effects and coupling to baryonic resonances are predicted to play an important role.