Measurement of electromagnetic cross sections in heavy ion interactions and its consequences for luminosity lifetimes in ion colliders

The authors report measurements on the total cross section for electron capture and measurements of the sum the total nuclear loss cross section through electromagnetic dissociation and hadronic interactions. The experiment was performed at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) with completely stripped Pb/sup 82+/ ions at 33 TeV (158 GeV/A). These measurements were mainly motivated by their theoretical importance as a test ground of QED under nonperturbative conditions. However, using the data and extrapolating to the energies of the RHIC and LHC colliders, limits on the beam lifetimes can also be estimated.