Screened Thin-Target Bremsstrahlung with Partially-Ionized High-Z Species

Abstract

Bremsstrahlung emission remains a cornerstone process in the characterization of electron dynamics in diverse high-energy environments. In particular, the accurate description of thin-target electron-ion bremsstrahlung in the presence of high-$Z$ species requires careful treatment of atomic screening effects, especially when atoms are partially ionized. We present a fully analytic screening model based on a multi-Yukawa representation of the atomic potential, enabling the calculation of bremsstrahlung cross sections for arbitrary nuclear charge and ionization state, and electron energies up to a few tens of MeV. This framework extends prior treatments of neutral atoms to include partially ionized high-$Z$ elements in a fully analytic framework.

Accepted manuscript. Published 10 April, 2026

References in corpus (2)

• Electron-atom bremsstrahlung: double differential cross section and polarization correlations
• Improved calculations of electron-ion Bremsstrahlung Gaunt factors for astrophysical applications