ELECTROMAGNETIC DISSOCIATION OF PB NUCLEI IN PERIPHERAL ULTRARELATIVISTIC HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS

We calculate the total electromagnetic dissociation cross section in peripheral heavy-ion collisions Pb-208 + Pb-208 for the planned colliders the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the CERN Large Hadron Collider, and the Superconducting Super Collider. The two nuclei interact via their Lorentz contracted electromagnetic fields leading to nuclear disintegration. We employ an impact-parameter-dependent version of the equivalent photon method with experimental photon-nucleus dissociation cross sections. The hadronic structure of the photon at large equivalent photon energies has been taken into account. In particular, we stress unitarity conservation of the dissociation probability for small impact parameters.