Strong suppression of Coulomb corrections to the cross section of e+e- pair production in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions

Abstract

The Coulomb corrections to the cross section of $e^+e^-$ pair production in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions are calculated in the next-to-leading approximation with respect to the parameter $L=\ln \gamma_A\gamma_B$ ($\gamma_{A,B}$ are the Lorentz factors of colliding nuclei). We found considerable reduction of the Coulomb corrections even for large $\gamma_A\gamma_B$ due to the suppression of the production of $e^+e^-$ pair with the total energy of the order of a few electron masses in the rest frame of one of the nuclei. Our result explains why the deviation from the Born result were not observed in the experiment at SPS.