Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-course-of-the-year-4-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/paper-1/section-a/a6/solution

For total relativistic energy , the speed is . Both beam energies are enormously greater than the rest energy, so expanding the square root avoids obscuring the small difference:
With all energies in GeV, , and , giving
The deficits below the speed of light are about and . The large energy increase therefore produces only a small speed increase; the energy mainly changes the Lorentz factor. These numbers use the quoted beam energies as total energies. Interpreting them as kinetic energies requires adding the rest energy, with only a tiny correction at these scales.

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