The Coulomb Scattering of High-Energy Electrons and Positrons by Nuclei

Abstract

The Mott cross section for the Coulomb scattering of high-energy electrons and positrons by atomic nuclei has been expressed by McKinley and Feshbach in terms of series in powers of Z/137, up to terms in Z4, where Z is the atomic number of the scattering nucleus. The coefficients of these series, which were evaluated numerically, have been re-calculated and some minor errors corrected. Further coefficients have been calculated to enable application of the method to heavy elements and the resulting cross section, expressed as a ratio to the Rutherford cross section, is given in the form of a single power series.