Comment on the absence of Coulomb effects on $e^+e^-$ pair production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

Abstract

In recent works [Segev,Wells; Baltz, McLerran; Eichmann, Reinhardt, Schramm, Greiner] it was claimed that the Coulomb correction to the $e^+e^-$ production cross section in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is absent. We point out that this statement is in obvious contradiction to some well known results. We obtain large Coulomb corrections in the pair production cross section for the RHIC and LHC heavy-ion colliders.