arXiv · nucl-th/9408009
Higher Order Processes in Electromagnetic Production of Electron Positron Pairs in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions
Abstract
We study higher-order effects in the electromagnetic production of electron-positron pairs in relativistic heavy ion collisions. Treating the field of the heavy ions as an external field and neglecting the interaction among electrons and positrons, we show that the $N$-pair creation amplitude is the antisymmetrised product of $N$ one-pair creation amplitudes and the vacuum amplitude. Neglecting contributions coming from exchange terms, we show that the total probability for $N$ pairs is approximately a Poisson distribution. We investigate further the structure of the reduced one-pair amplitude, concentrating especially on multiple-particle corrections. We calculate the first of these corrections in second order Magnus theory based on our previous result in second-order Born approximation for impact parameter $b$ zero. Explicit calculations show that the total probability is increased up to 10 \% by this correction for realistic collider parameters. The calculations can also be used to confirm the use of the Poisson distribution for the total probability.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Explore connections, maps & timelines
Kai Hencken, Dirk Trautmann, Gerhard Baur. 1994-08-08. Higher Order Processes in Electromagnetic Production of Electron Positron Pairs in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.51.998
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.