Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-particle-and-nuclear-physics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2012/paper-1/1/c/solution

The nuclear quadrupole vibration has five one-phonon magnetic substates, . Bose-Einstein statistics restrict three identical phonons to the symmetric power , of dimension . Count occupation states with and . For nonnegative the counts are
Each spin- irreducible representation contributes one state at every projection from to . magnetic-substate subtraction therefore gives multiplicity : one each at , and none at . Thus the three-quadrupole-phonon multiplet is
The dimension check is . The parity is positive because each constituent phonon has positive parity. Pairwise angular-momentum triangle rules alone would include states incompatible with complete boson symmetrization.

New to topics? Read the docs here!