Born-Infeld nonlinear electromagnetism in relativistic heavy ion collisions

Abstract

We study the effect of the limiting field strength of Born-Infeld electromagnetism on the dynamics of charged particle scattering. We formulate the Born-Infeld limiting field in an invariant manner, showing that it is the electric field-dominated eigenvalue `$a$' of the field tensor $F^{\mu\nu}$ which is limited rather than the individual field vectors. Heavy ion collisions in particular provide uniquely large values of the field invariants that appear in the BI action, amplifying nonlinear effects. Thus ``$a$'' is the dominant input into the force between heavy ions that we use to compute the scattering angle as a function of impact parameter. We evaluate the BI effects, showing relevance at small impact parameters and exhibiting their dependence on the value of the limiting field strength.