A review of electron-nucleus bremsstrahlung cross sections between 1 and 10Â MeV

More than 80 years have passed since the first calculations of electron-nucleus bremsstrahlung cross sections were published by Sommerfeld, for non-relativistic electrons, and, independently, by Sauter, Bethe and Heitler, and Racah, for relativistic electrons. The Bethe-Heitler expression, that is based on the first Born approximation and includes the screening of the Coulomb field of the nucleus by the atomic electrons, has proven to work well at moderately high energies where the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect is negligible. We review the current theoretical and experimental status with a highlight on electrons with kinetic energies between 1 and 10 MeV. The choice is motivated by the peculiar difficulties present in this energy region, where it is necessary to treat simultaneously the interaction with the Coulomb field beyond the first Born approximation and the effect of screening. A fully numerical approach within the S-matrix formalism has proven to be extremely difficult above a few MeV, because the number of partial waves needed for an accurate evaluation is prohibitively large. Here we focus on analytic results, including the more complex ones employing the Furry-Sommerfeld-Maue wave functions and taking into account the next-to-leading order, and discuss the advantages and limitations in light of the best available data. The influence of multiple scattering in the target is investigated under the actual experimental conditions. A comparison with the widely used cross section tabulations by Seltzer and Berger is also presented.