Bound-Free Electron-Positron Pair Production in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Helmar Meier, Zlatko Halabuka, Kai Hencken, Dirk Trautmann, Gerhard Baur

Published 2000-08-10, updated 2000-08-15Version 2

We study the bound-free electron-positron pair production in relativistic heavy ion collisions to different bound states in a full Plane Wave Born Approximation (PWBA) calculation. Exact Dirac wave functions are used for both the bound electron and the free positron in the final states. Results for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider RHIC as well as the forthcoming Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are given. This process is one of the dominant beam loss processes and can become critical for the operation with heavy ions. A simple parameterization is given as well. We compare our results with calculations of other groups.