Calculation of heavy ion e+ e- pair production to all orders in Z alpha

Abstract

The heavy ion total cross section for continuum e+ e- pair production has been calculated to all orders in Z alpha. The formula resulting from an exact solution of the semiclassical Dirac equation in the ultrarelativistic limit is evaluated numerically. An energy dependent spatial cutoff of the heavy ion potential is utilized, leading to an exact formula agreeing with the known perturbative formula in the ultrarelativistic, perturbative limit. Cross sections and sample momentum distributions are evaluated for heavy ion beams at SPS, RHIC, and LHC energies. e+ e- pair production probabilities are found to be reduced from perturbation theory with increasing charge of the colliding heavy ions and for all energy and momentum regions investigated.

18 pages, latex, revtex, 5 eps figures; revised version with added material and two additional figures; v3 minor changes to be consitent with published version: references ordering etc

References in corpus (2)

• Production of $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ Pairs Accompanied by Nuclear Dissociation in Ultra-Peripheral Heavy Ion Collision
• Coulomb corrections in the calculation of ultrarelativistic heavy ion production of continuum e+ e- pairs

Cited by in corpus (8)

• The Physics of Ultraperipheral Collisions at the LHC
• Electron-Positron Pair Production in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
• Nuclear form factor, validity of the equivalent photon approximation and Coulomb corrections to muon pair production in photon-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions
• Evidence for higher order QED in e+ e- pair production at RHIC
• Higher Order QED Calculation of Ultrarelativistic Heavy Ion Production of mu+ mu- Pairs
• Impact parameter dependence of heavy ion e+ e- pair production to all orders in Z alpha
• Forward hadron production in ultraperipheral proton-heavy-ion collisions at the LHC and RHIC
• Strong suppression of Coulomb corrections to the cross section of e+e- pair production in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions