Stopping of relativistic projectiles in two-component plasmas

Abstract

Relativistic and correlation contributions to the polarizational energy losses of heavy projectiles moving in dense two-component plasmas are analyzed within the method of moments that allows one to reconstruct the Lindhard loss function from its three independently known power frequency moments. The techniques employed result in a thorough separation of the relativistic and correlation corrections to the classical asymptotic form for the polarizational losses obtained by Bethe and Larkin. The above corrections are studied numerically at different values of plasma parameters to show that the relativistic contribution enhances only slightly the corresponding value of the stopping power.