Complete Coulomb correction to the Molière screening angle

Abstract

AbstractNonperturbative (Coulomb) correction to the Molière screening angle in the multiple Coulomb scattering theory is evaluated taking into account the inelastic contribution. Treating the atom as an assembly of pointlike electrons and the nucleus, and summing the scattering probability over all the final states of the atom, it is shown that besides the Coulomb correction due to close encounters of the incident charged particle with atomic nuclei, there are similar corrections due to close encounters with atomic electrons, being the counterpart of Bloch correction in ionization energy loss. For low $$Z\ne 1$$ Z ≠ 1 the latter contribution can reach $$\sim 25\%$$ ∼ 25 % .