Lepton Pair Production from Two-Photon Processes

Abstract

An exact expression for the lepton-pair mass spectrum for an ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{4}$ two-photon process in lepton-lepton, lepton-hadron, and hadron-hadron scattering processes is derived. This result is applied to muon pair production in proton-proton scattering to show that such a process is an important background to the ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}^{2}$ one-photon process in certain energy ranges and can become physically significant by itself at very high energies. The general physical significance of such a two-photon process in hadron-hadron scattering is discussed, and comparison of our exact expression with some approximation schemes is made. The main differences between this work and earlier papers on the subject are that (1) exact calculations are given and (2) the inelastic contributions are included.