Cross sections and energy loss for lepton pair production in muon transport

TL;DR

This paper reevaluates lepton pair production by muons in materials, introducing a formalism that accounts for inelastic and elastic scattering, with implications for tau pair production at high energies.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive formalism for lepton pair production that includes inelastic, elastic, and hadronic recoil effects, extending applicability to tau pairs at high energies.

Findings

Electron-positron pair production results agree with previous evaluations.

Tau pair production has significant inelastic scattering contributions.

The formalism is useful for high-energy tau pair production studies.

Abstract

We reevaluate electron-positron pair production from electromagnetic interactions of muons in transit through materials. Our approach, through the use of structure functions for inelastic and elastic scattering and including hadronic recoil, make the formalism useful for tau pair production at high energies. Our results for electron-positron pair production agree well with prior evaluations. Tau pair production, has a significant contribution from inelastic scattering in addition to the usual coherent scattering with the nucleus and scattering with atomic electrons.