The Angular Distribution of Pair-Produced Electrons and Bremsstrahlung

Abstract

The Bethe-Heitler unscreened cross sections for pair production and bremsstrahlung have been integrated to give the angular distributions. For simplicity, results are restricted to large angles and high energies, but it is shown that extension to smaller angles requires that screening be considered at energies for which screening is important in the usual differential cross sections. The effect of the finite size of the nucleus is estimated and found to be large at the higher energies. It is shown that large-angle pair production will provide only a very small background for single meson production by quanta.