Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-prelims-and-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2016/s7/2/c/solution

For equal masses , the newly conserved relative energy is
It is kinetic energy relative to the free center of mass plus the two interactions. Adding its constant center kinetic energy and the already conserved energies gives the total Hamiltonian. The equal-mass oscillator rotations simplify to , but are not new: for unequal masses their conserved predecessors contain the mass-weight factors. As a concrete check, independent transformations of rotate an isotropic oscillator at any positive masses. Complete mass equality does not magically make generic invariant under rotations of physical space.

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