Radiative Corrections to Symmetric Pair Production

Abstract

The radiative corrections to symmetric pair production are calculated to a high degree of accuracy. The matrix element squared for the hard-photon correction is expressed approximately in a simple form which, for symmetric pair production, describes the corresponding radiative correction to better than 1%. This approximation improves on the often-used peaking approximation. The results are useful also for calculating radiative corrections to bremsstrahlung and trident production.