Coulomb field correction due to virtual $e^+e^-$ production in heavy ion collisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates how virtual electron-positron pair production slightly modifies Coulomb energy calculations in nuclear physics, affecting models of nuclear collisions and potential energy barriers.

Contribution

It introduces a correction to Coulomb energy accounting for virtual $e^+e^-$ pairs and explores its impact on nuclear models and collision dynamics.

Findings

Coulomb energy correction is about 1% at nuclear scales.

Including pair-production terms affects the semi-empirical mass formula.

The correction influences Coulomb barrier calculations in nuclear collisions.

Abstract

The correction to the Coulomb energy due to virtual production of $e^+e^-$ pairs, which is on the order of one percent of the Coulomb energy at nuclear scales is discussed. The effects of including a pair-production term in the semi-empirical mass formula and the correction to the Coulomb barrier for a handful of nuclear collisions using the Bass and Coulomb potentials are studied. With an eye toward future work using Constrained Molecular Dynamics (CoMD) model, we also calculate the correction to the Coulomb energy and force between protons after folding with a Gaussian spatial distribution.