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A light-fronts approach to electron-positron pair production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

B. Segev·J. C. Wells
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Abstract

We perform a gauge-transformation on the time-dependent Dirac equation describing the evolution of an electron in a heavy-ion collision to remove the explicit dependence on the long-range part of the interaction. We solve, in an ultra-relativistic limit, the gauged-transformed Dirac equation using light-front variables and a light-fronts representation, obtaining non-perturbative results for the free pair-creation amplitudes in the collider frame. Our result reproduces the result of second-order perturbation theory in the small charge limit while non-perturbative effects arise for realistic charges of the ions.

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B. Segev, J. C. Wells. 1997-10-07. A light-fronts approach to electron-positron pair production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.57.1849

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