Dilepton anisotropy from p + Be and Ca + Ca collisions at BEVALAC energies

A full calculation of lepton-pair angular characteristics is carried out for $e^+e^-$ pairs created in $p + Be$ and $Ca + Ca$ collisions from 1.0 to 2.1 GeV/A. It is demonstrated that the dilepton decay anisotropy depends sensitively on the different sources and may be used for their disentangling. Due to the dominance of the $\eta$-and $\Delta$-Dalitz decays and only a small anisotropy coefficient for $\pi^+\pi^-$ annihilation, the expected anisotropy coefficients show a decrease with invariant mass of the dilepton pair and change only moderately when comparing $p + Be$ and $Ca + Ca$ reactions at the same bombarding energy.