Ultra-Relativistic Nuclei in Crystal Channel: Coulomb Scattering, Coherence and Absorption

Abstract

We incorporate the effect of lattice thermal vibrations into the Glauber theory description of particle- and nucleus-crystal Coulomb interactions at high-energy. The allowance for the lattice thermal vibrations is shown to produce strong absorption effect: the phase shift function of the multiple-diffraction scattering on a chain of $N$ identical atoms acquires large imaginary part and the radius of the absorption region in the impact parameter plane grows logarithmically with $N$. Consequences of this observation for the elastic and quasi-elastic Coulomb scattering are discussed. Practically interesting example of the coherent Coulomb excitation of ultra-relativistic particles and nuclei passing through the crystal is considered in detail.