Coulomb corrections for coherent electroproduction of vector mesons: Eikonal approximation

Virtual radiative corrections due to the long-range Coulomb forces of heavy nuclei with charge Z may lead to sizeable corrections to the Born cross-section usually used for lepton-nucleus scattering processes. An introduction and presentation of the most important issues of the eikonal approximation is given. We present calculations for forward electroproduction of rho-mesons in a framework suggested by the VDM (vector dominance model), using the eikonal approximation. It turns out that Coulomb corrections may become relatively large. Some minor errors in the literature are corrected.