Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-a-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/paper-1/section-b/b7/d/solution
Past exam of the physics A course of the University of Cambridge 2019 Paper 1 Section B B7 d Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
The nuclear beta decay is fast compared with the electronic orbital timescale. In the sudden approximation, the electronic wavefunction does not have time to change during the increase from to . The subsequent probability of a particular daughter energy eigenstate is therefore its squared overlap with the initial state.
For the final state, write and . The sudden hydrogenic charge change gives the amplitudeThusThe final states have spherical harmonics , whereas the initial state is proportional to . Their angular overlap vanishes by orthogonality. Accordingly in the ideal spherically symmetric sudden-change model. Nuclear recoil or interactions with the emitted particles can produce small corrections. This is an overlap selection rule for a sudden change, not a photon-induced electric dipole transition.
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