Production of exotic atoms at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

Abstract

We study in details the space-time dependence of the production of muonic, pionic, and other exotic atoms by the coherent photon exchange between nuclei at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. We show that a multipole expansion of the electromagnetic interaction yields an useful insight of the bound-free production mechanism which has not been explored in the literature. Predictions for the spatial, temporal, and angular distribution, as well as the total cross sections, for the production of exotic atoms are also included.