Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-particle-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2017/4/a/solution

Nuclear-field pair creation is . A virtual photon exchanged with the nucleus supplies recoil momentum, while the real photon and virtual photon attach to the electron line joining the outgoing pair. The figure shows a representative graph. The second attachment ordering must be included in the full amplitude. A real photon cannot create a free massive pair in vacuum: its invariant mass is zero, whereas . Nuclear recoil resolves that kinematic obstruction and permits energy-momentum conservation.
Figure 1.
Representative nuclear-field pair-production and bremsstrahlung diagrams
. Details.

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