Electronic relativistic effects in K-shell Coulomb ionization by heavy charged particles

The straight-line semiclassical approximation is applied to calculations of K-shell Coulomb ionization of atoms by heavy charged particles, using relativistic Coulomb wavefunctions for the electrons. The effect of the Coulomb deflection of the projectile is taken into account. Numerical results both for total cross sections and for ionization probabilities as a function of the impact parameter are presented. The agreement with experiment is considerably improved for heavy target atoms. There is also an improvement over earlier PWBA calculations of the process.