Dilepton Production from AGS to SPS Energies within a Relativistic Transport Approach

We present a nonperturbative dynamical study of $e^+e^-$ production in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions from AGS to SPS energies on the basis of the covariant transport approach HSD. For p + Be reactions the dilepton yield for invariant masses $M \leq 1.4$ GeV is found to be dominated by the decays of the $\eta, \rho, \omega$ and $\Phi$ mesons at all energies from 10 -- 450 GeV. For nucleus-nucleus collisions, however, the dilepton yield shows an additional large contribution from $\pi^+\pi^-$, $K^+K^-$ and $\pi \rho$ channels. Systematic studies are presented for the 'free' meson mass scenario in comparison to a 'dropping' meson mass scenario at finite baryon density. We find that for 'dropping' meson masses the invariant dilepton mass range 0.35 GeV $\leq M \leq$ 0.65 GeV is increased in comparison to the 'free' meson mass scenario and that the data of the CERES-collaboration for nucleus-nucleus collisions can be described much better within the 'dropping' mass scheme. We study in detail the contributions from the various dilepton channels as a function of the transverse momentum and rapidity of the lepton pair as well as a function of the charged particle multiplicity. Furthermore, various direct photon channels for S + Au at 200 GeV/u are computed and found to be well below the upper bounds measured by the WA80-collaboration.