Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-symmetry-and-relativity-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2019/4/b/solution

Restoring units, the decaying Yukawa potential is with range . For ,
The geometric factor belongs in the potential ratio; the exponential alone is the additional suppression relative to massless exchange. Using gives
The following are ratios of potential magnitudes to the magnitude at , with the same coupling held fixed:
Mediator
Massless scalar
For example, the pion's nuclear exponential factor is , whereas the Higgs nuclear exponent is about . The huge atomic suppressions are most reliably reported through logarithms, not through floating-point exponentiation that silently underflows to zero. These are potential energy ratios, not force ratios or absolute comparisons of different interaction strengths.

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