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Formation of heavy quarks in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions
(1992)
- We investigate the production of heavy quarks in continuum and bound states in nuclear collisions. Creation rates for free bb̅ and tt̅ quark pairs and for bottomonium and toponium in the ground state are computed at energies of the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and Superconducting Super Collider. Central and peripheral heavy-ion collisions are discussed. For top-quark creation we assumed a mass range of 90≤mt≤250 GeV. The creation rate for top quarks in peripheral collisions is estimated to be by a factor 40 to 130 smaller compared with corresponding central collisions. For mt=130 GeV we calculated a creation rate of about 4760 top-quark pairs per day at the LHC (3.5 TeV/nucleon) for Pb-Pb collisions.
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Angular Correlations of Coincident Electron-Positron Pairs Produced in Heavy-Ion Collisions with Nuclear Time Delay
(1988)
- We calculate angular correlations between coincident electron-positron pairs emitted in heavy-ion collisions with nuclear time delay. Special attention is directed to a comparison of supercritical and subcritical systems, where angular correlations of pairs produced in collisions of bare U nuclei are found to alter their sign for nuclear delay times of the order of 2 × 10-21 s. This effect is shown to occur exclusively in supercritical systems, where spontaneous positron creation is active.
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Nonlinear extensions of the Dirac equation and their implications in QED
(1988)
- We investigate the influence of additional nonlinear terms in the Dirac Lagrangian on strongly bound electron states in heavy and superheavy atoms. Upper bounds for the coupling constants are deduced by comparison with precision spectroscopy data in QED. We demonstrate that nonlinear interactions may cause significant modifications of electron binding energies in superheavy quasiatomic systems which would not be visible in ordinary atomic-physics measurements.
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K-shell ionization by antiprotons
(1987)
- We present calculations for the impact-parameter dependence of K-shell ionization rates in p¯-Cu and in p¯-Ag collisions at various projectile energies. We show that the effect of the attractive Coulomb potential on the Rutherford trajectory and the antibinding effect caused by the negative charge of the antiproton result in a considerable increase of the ionization probability. Total ionization cross sections for proton and antiproton projectiles are compared with each other and with experimental ionization cross sections for protons.
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Angular correlation of electrons and positrons in internal pair conversion
(1990)
- The angular distribution of electrons and positrons emitted in internal pair conversion is calculated. Coulomb-distorted waves are used as electron wave functions. Nuclear transitions of various multipolarities L>0 and of magnetic (ML) and of electric (EL) type are considered as well as E0 conversion. Analytical expressions for the angular correlation are derived, which are evaluated numerically assuming a finite extension of the nucleus and, for the EL and ML conversion, also in the point-nucleus approximation. The calculated angular correlations are compared with results obtained within the Born approximation and, for the E0 case, with experimental data.
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Prospects for an atomic parity-violation experiment in U90+
(1989)
- Parity mixing of electron states should be extremely strong for heliumlike uranium. We calculate its size and discuss whether it could be determined experimentally. We analyze one specific scheme for such an experiment. The required laser intensities for two-photon spectroscopy of the 23P0–2 1S0level splitting is of the order of 1017 W/cm2. A determination of parity mixing would require at least 1021 W/cm2.
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Electron emission and positron production in deep inelastic heavy-ion reactions
(1984)
- Atomic excitations are used to obtain information on the course of a nuclear reaction. Employing a semiclassical picture we calculate the emission of δ electrons and positrons in deep inelastic nuclear reactions for the example of U+U collisions incorporating nuclear trajectories resulting from two different nuclear friction models. The emission spectra exhibit characteristic deviations from those expected for elastic Coulomb scattering. The theoretical probabilities are compared with recent experimental data by Backe et al. A simple model is used to estimate the influence of a threebody breakup of the compound system upon atomic excitations.
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Role of multistep processes in heavy-ion inner-shell excitations
(1979)
- This Letter discusses inner-shell excitation in collisions of very heavy ions (Z1+Z2≳140) in the framework of the quasimolecular model. The importance of multistep excitations and of coupling between continuum states is demonstrated. The 1sσ vacancy probabilities resulting from coupled-channels calculations exceed perturbation theory by a factor 3-5, thus giving good agreement with recent experimental results.
