The Bethe-Maximon result

Abstract

We develop and illustrate a very simple eikonal technique in the framework of one-particle quantum mechanics for calculating radiation during scattering and apply it to derive the celebrated result of Bethe and Maximon for bremsstrahlung from a point Coulomb target with a large charge Ze. This approach is a modification of that developed in a previous paper for calculating radiation during the collision of electron-positron beam pulses (beamstrahlung). The differences in the physics of scattering from a localized target and from an extended target are clarified. A second reason for the present note is the simplicity of our method and its possible extension to other processes.