Di-Electrons from Resonances in Nucleon-Nucleon Collisions

The contribution of the low-lying nucleon resonances P-33(1232), P-11(1440), D-13(1520), and S-11(1535) to the invariant-mass spectra of di-electrons stemming from the exclusive processes pp -> pp e(+)e(-) and pn -> pn e(+)e(-) is investigated within a fully covariant and gauge-invariant diagrammatical approach. We employ, within the one-boson exchange approximation, effective nucleon-meson interactions including the exchange mesons pi, eta, sigma, omega, and rho as well as excitations and radiative decays of the above low-lying nucleon resonances. The total contribution of these resonances is dominant; however, bremsstrahlung processes in pp and, in particular, pn collisions at beam energies of 1-2 GeV are still significant in certain phase-space regions.