COHERENT ELECTROMAGNETIC PRODUCTION OF MU AND TAU LEPTON PAIRS IN RELATIVISTIC HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS

The authors calculate the coherent production of muon and tauon pairs in peripheral collisions between nuclei at ultra-relativistic energies. This type of production exhibits a high degree of sensitivity to the electromagnetic structure of the nucleons in the colliding nuclei. The pair cross sections, even at high invariant masses and transverse momenta, are large on hadronic scales, and are governed by the magnitude of the nuclear and nucleon form factors at momentum transfers greater than 1 GeV c-1. They argue that this process could serve as a useful experimental probe of nuclear and nucleon form factors.