Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-symmetry-and-relativity-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/1/c/solution

With the reversed electric field, reflection about exchanges the electron and Positron. They therefore meet there with equal and opposite momenta. Each travels , and the work-energy theorem gives its kinetic energy:
Their combined kinetic energy is , while each total relativistic energy is . The laboratory is the center-of-momentum frame of the colliding pair.
Local four-momentum conservation in the electron-positron annihilation excludes one real photon: the incoming total four-momentum is timelike, with zero spatial component and positive energy, while a single photon's four-momentum is null and has . Two photons can balance their momenta by travelling in opposite directions, so
The equal photon energies follow from opposite equal momenta, not merely from sharing the incoming energy arbitrarily. Here . This is the free local annihilation idealization implicit in the question; significant momentum transfer to the external apparatus would change the kinematic system being considered.

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