Coulomb corrections to bremsstrahlung in the electric field of a heavy atom at high energies

Abstract

The differential and partially integrated cross sections are considered for bremsstrahlung from high-energy electrons in atomic field with the exact account of this field. The consideration exploits the quasiclassical electron Green's function and wave functions in an external electric field. It is shown that the Coulomb corrections to the differential cross section are very susceptible to screening. Nevertheless, the Coulomb corrections to the cross section summed up over the final-electron states are independent of screening in the leading approximation over a small parameter $1/mr_{scr}$ ($r_{scr}$ is a screening radius, $m$ is the electron mass, $\hbar=c=1$). Bremsstrahlung from an electron beam of the finite size on heavy nucleus is considered as well. Again, the Coulomb corrections to the differential probability are very susceptible to the beam shape, while those to the probability integrated over momentum transfer are independent of it, apart from the trivial factor, which is the electron-beam density at zero impact parameter. For the Coulomb corrections to the bremsstrahlung spectrum, the next-to-leading terms with respect to the parameters $m/\epsilon$ ($\epsilon$ is the electron energy) and $1/mr_{scr}$ are obtained.