Journal
NUCLEAR PHYSICS A
Volume 695, Issue -, Pages 395-429Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/S0375-9474(01)01109-5
Keywords
ultra-relativistic nuclei collisions; electromagnetic pair production; eikonal approximation; Coulomb corrections
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The purpose of this paper is to explain the discrepancies existing in the literature relative to e(+)e(-) pair production in peripheral heavy ion collisions at ultra-relativistic energies. A controversial issue is the possible cancellation of Coulomb corrections to the Born term in the pair production cross-section. Such a cancellation has been observed in a recent approach based on finding retarded solutions of the Dirac equation, but does not seem to hold in a perturbative approach. We show in this paper that the two approaches are in fact calculating different observables: the perturbative approach gives the exclusive cross-section of single pair production, while the other method gives the inclusive cross-section. We have also performed a thorough study of the electron propagator in the non-static background field of the two nuclei, the conclusion of which is that the retarded propagator is in the ultrarelativistic limit a much simpler object than the Feynman propagator, and can be calculated exactly. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
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