Multipole Expansion for Relativistic Coulomb Excitation

We derive a general expression for the multipole expansion of the electro-magnetic interaction in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, which can be employed in higher-order dynamical calculations of Coulomb excitation. The interaction has diagonal as well as off-diagonal multipole components, associated with the intrinsic and relative coordinates of projectile and target. A simple truncation in the off-diagonal components gives excellent results in first-order perturbation theory for distant collisions and for beam energies up to 200 MeV/nucleon.