Microfield Fluctuations and Spectral Line Shapes in Strongly Coupled Two-Component Plasmas

The spectral line shapes for hydrogen-like heavy ion emitters embedded in strongly correlated two-component electron-ion plasmas are investigated with numerical simulations. For that purpose the microfield fluctuations are calculated by molecular dynamics simulations where short range quantum effects are taken into account by using a regularized Coulomb potential for the electron-ion interaction. The microfield fluctuations are used as input in a numerical solution of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation for the radiating electron. In distinction to the standard impact and quasistatic approximations the method presented here allows to account for the correlations between plasma ions and electrons. The shapes of the Ly-alpha line in Al are investigated in the intermediate regime. The calculations are in good agreement with experiments on the Ly-alpha line in laser generated plasmas.Comment: 5 figure

Electron-Positron Pair Production in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

In recent years, a large number of papers have appeared that dealt with \EPEM pair production in heavy ion collisions at high energies. To a large extent these studies were motivated by the existence of relativistic heavy ion accelerators all over the world. There pair production can be studied in so called ``ultra-peripheral collisions'', where the ions do not come close enough to interact strongly with each other. Various different methods have been used and it is the purpose of this review to present a unified picture of the present status of the field.Comment: 51 pages, 16 figures, submitted to Physics Report