Eur. Phys. J. D (2015) 69: 110
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2015-50783-6

Regular Article

Positron creation probabilities in low-energy heavy-ion collisions^*

¹ Department of Physics, St. Petersburg State University, Ulianovskaya 1, Petrodvorets, 198504 St. Petersburg, Russia
² SSC RF ITEP of NRC “Kurchatov Institute”, Bolshaya Cheremushkinskaya 25, 117218 Moscow, Russia
³ Institut für Theoretische Physik, Technische Universität Dresden, Mommsenstrasse 13, 01062 Dresden, Germany

^a e-mail: bondarev@pcqnt1.phys.spbu.ru

Received: 3 November 2014
Received in final form: 30 January 2015
Published online: 16 April 2015

Abstract

The previously developed technique for calculation of ionization probabilities in low-energy heavy-ion collisions [A.I. Bondarev et al., Phys. Scr. T156, 014054 (2013)] is extended to evaluation of positron creation probabilities. The differential probabilities are evaluated by two alternative methods. The first one uses hydrogenic continuum wave functions, while the second one uses discretized continuum wave functions corresponding to a finite basis expansion. These methods are applied to the calculation of the differential positron creation probabilities in the U^{91 +}(1s)-U⁹²⁺ collision. The results obtained by both methods are found in good agreement.