Relativistic Coulomb excitation of the giant dipole resonance in nuclei: How to calculate transition probabilities without invoking the Liénard-Wiechert relativistic scalar and vector potentials

Abstract

The conclusions extracted from a recent study of the excitation of giant dipole resonances in nuclei at relativistic bombarding energies open the way for a further simplification of the problem. It consists in the elimination of the relativistic scalar and vector electromagnetic potentials and the familiar numerical difficulties associated with their presence in the calculation scheme. The inherent advantage of a reformulation of the problem of relativistic Coulomb excitation of giant dipole resonances along these lines is discussed.