Inclusive e$^+$e$^-$ production in collisions of pions with protons and nuclei in the second resonance region of baryons
Inclusive e$^+$e$^-$ production has been studied with HADES in $π^-$ + p, $π^-$ + C and $π^- + \mathrm{CH}_2$ reactions, using the GSI pion beam at $\sqrt{s_{πp}}$ = 1.49 GeV. Invariant mass and transverse momentum distributions have been measured and reveal contributions from Dalitz decays of $π^0$, $η$ mesons and baryon resonances. The transverse momentum distributions are very sensitive to the underlying kinematics of the various processes. The baryon contribution exhibits a deviation up to a factor seven from the QED reference expected for the dielectron decay of a hypothetical point-like baryon with the production cross section constrained from the inverse $γ$ n$\rightarrow π^-$ p reaction. The enhancement is attributed to a strong four-momentum squared dependence of the time-like electromagnetic transition form factors as suggested by Vector Meson Dominance (VMD). Two versions of the VMD, that differ in the photon-baryon coupling, have been applied in simulations and compared to data. VMD1 (or two-component VMD) assumes a coupling via the $ρ$ meson and a direct coupling of the photon, while in VMD2 (or strict VMD) the coupling is only mediated via the $ρ$ meson. The VMD2 model, frequently used in transport calculations for dilepton decays, is found to overestimate the measured dielectron yields, while a good description of the data can be obtained with the VMD1 model assuming no phase difference between the two amplitudes. Similar descriptions have also been obtained using a time-like baryon transition form factor model where the pion cloud plays the major role.