Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-particle-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2022/1/e/solution
Past exam of the particle physics course of the University of Oxford 2022 1 e Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
The intermediate photon carries spin . In the massless limit, a back-to-back fermion-antifermion pair coupled to its vector current has opposite helicities, so the initial and final projections along their respective axes are . A rotation between these axes contributes the Wigner D-matrix elements . The relevant elements have magnitudes and . Summing the four squared helicity amplitudes gives the angular factorThe common coupling and normalization factors recover the result in d. The terms do not contribute: the massless external vector currents eliminate the corresponding helicity configurations.
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