Electromagnetic Processes in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Electromagnetic processes in peripheral nucleus-nucleus collisions are reviewed. First I discuss applications to radiative capture processes of astrophysical interest, the use of Coulomb-dissociation for the study of the structure of exotic secondary beams, and multiphoton excitations of multiphonon giant resonances and giant resonances coupled to low lying surface modes. In the second part, electromagnetic effects at relativistic heavy ions colliders are discussed, they are a serious source of loss for beam particles, which leads to a decrease of luminosity with time. Finally, the possibility to use ultra-relativistic heavy ion collision for fundamental studies in γ-γ physics is explored. The essential advantage over γ-γ-physics at e + e-colliders is, due to the coherence effect, the Z 4 -factor (⩽ 10 8 ) in the cross section.