Coulomb Dissociation of Beam Particles

The possibility of the dissociation of beam particles by the Coulomb field of the nucleus is discussed. The process is very similar in nature to the well-known electromagnetic processes of pair production and bremsstrahlung. Analogous processes might be (a) ${\pi }^{+}+{}_Z{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}N_{}^A{}_{}{}^{}\to \overline{p}+n+{}_Z{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}N_{}^A{}_{}{}^{}$, and (b) $p+{}_Z{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}N_{}^A{}_{}{}^{}\to p+{\pi }^0+{}_Z{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}N_{}^A{}_{}{}^{}$. These processes will probably have a sizeable cross section for occurrence at energies greater than 74 Bev for (a) and 14 Bev for (b) if Pb is used as the target material. The useful feature of this sort of reaction is that in essence one can do photoproduction experiments on unstable particle targets. (Piccioni has pointed out the possibility of disintegrating $\pi$ mesons.) Cross-section estimates for dissociation can be made using the Weizsäcker-Williams approach.