Reaction rates and energy distributions for elementary processes in relativistic pair plasmas

Abstract

Reaction rates are given for two-body processes in an isotropic-pair plasma. The rates are accurate over mildly relativistic energies and are given as functions of the incident particle energies rather than integrated over a thermal distribution. The processes considered are: Compton scattering, pair annihilation, two-photon pair production, Coulomb scattering, and e-e bremsstrahlung. For the first three processes, the mean energy of the final states together with the dispersion in energy about their mean energies are computed. Approximate expressions are presented where these have proven useful. The results have been tabulated for use in kinetic equation studies of pair plasmas.