Possible measurement of the vacuum polarization in heavy-ion scattering

Abstract

A measurement of vacuum polarization effects in nonrelativistic elastic heavy ion scattering is suggested. We find that in a typical subcoulomb barrier .event enough momentum is transferred from the projectile to the target nucleus to make 2 the high q behavior of the photon propagator observable. The elastic cross section is increased in a typical case by 2.5% above the Rutherford value. Only relative measurements are needed..-