Non-Perturbative Momentum Space Approach to Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

New non-perturbative numerical calculations have been performed to study atomic processes in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The propagation of the electron wave function is treated entirely in momentum space. Our method has been applied for Au 79+ and U 92+ impinging on U 91+ at 0.24-10 GeV/u. Probabilities have been obtained for bound-free pair production, charge transfer, ionization and excitation. For bound-free pair production at small impact parameters, our results confirm the breakdown of perturbation theory but the increase is much smaller than that reported by other non-perturbative methods.