Delbrück and nuclear effects in photon scattering: recent developments

✍ Scribed by E. Canetta; U. Lucia; G. Maino

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 241 KB
• Volume: 28
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0049-8246
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4539(199909/10)28:5<357::aid-xrs365>3.0.co;2-p

✦ Synopsis

Delbr ück scattering, which is the elastic scattering of a photon in a Coulomb field, is of interest both as an observable high-order non-linear process in quantum electrodynamics and as an interfering process in studies of nuclear structure. This process has been extensively investigated in the past from theoretical and computational points of view. In this paper, attention is mainly focused on the theoretical features and, in particular, the dispersion relation approach and a critical review of the numerical evaluations of the firstorder Born approximation cross-section is presented. Applications and limits of these results are discussed in comparison with experimental data on elastic photon scattering by medium-and heavy-mass nuclei and theoretical models of nuclear structure.