Electron-Positron Pair Creation in Relativistic Atomic Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

The production of electron-positron pairs in relativistic atomic heavy ion collisions has been studied with increasing interest in the last years. With the notation “atomic collisions” we mean collisions with an impact parameter larger than twice the nuclear radius. Theoretical work on the electron-positron creation in collisions of fast charged particles started with the work of Landau and Lifschitz (for references of the former work see e.g. Heitler [1]). With the development of colliders for relativistic heavy ions new elaborate work on electron-positron creation came up [2, 3]. Pair creation with capture of the electron into a bound state of an ion changes the charge of the ion and is one of the main processes for the loss of ions in relativistic heavy ion colliders. The cross section is of the order of 100 barn for RHIC energies (E cm = 100 GeV/nucleon). A nonperturbative calculation usually enlarges the cross section for pair creation with capture. Therefore, nonperturbative calculations are urgently needed for high incident energies. Reviews on this field have been given by Bertulani and Baur [4] and Eichler [5].