Description of atomic excitations in heavy-ion reactions

Excitations of the atomic shell in heavy-ion collisions are influenced by the presence of a nuclear reaction. In the present Rapid Communication we point out the equivalence between a semiclassical description based on the nuclear autocorrelation function with an earlier model which employs a distribution of reaction times $f\left(T\right)\mathrm{}$. For the example of U+U collisions, results of coupled-channel calculations for positron creation and $K$-hole excitations are discussed for two schematic reaction models.