Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-b-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/paper-2/section-c/c9/a/solution

A cubic reflecting cavity supports standing waves with positive integer mode indices and wavevector components . A cell in mode space has volume . In the continuum approximation, a spherical shell of radius and thickness has one-eighth of its volume in the positive octant. There are two independent transverse photon polarizations for a generic wavevector. Hence
The photon energy is , so . Therefore
This is the leading bulk density of states, valid when the cavity is large compared with the relevant wavelengths and many modes lie in the counting interval. A finite cavity has a discrete mode spectrum, with boundary corrections beyond this approximation. Modes with vanishing indices require separate boundary counting but do not change the leading term. Here is the reduced Planck constant, as printed in the original PDF; replacing it by would introduce an erroneous factor of .

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