Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 ia Paper 4 9C Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
First apply momentum conservation to the rocket and the infinitesimal amount of expelled gas. During , the exhaust mass is and its inertial velocity, to first order, is . With no dust, the momentum balance isIt gives the rocket equation , while .
For a dust-collecting rocket, the incoming dust mass is with zero initial momentum. The same balance has rocket mass after the interval, soConsequentlyThe second term in the acceleration equation accounts for the momentum required to bring collected dust up to rocket speed.
Set and , so . As long as the engines operate and , the velocity increases and time can be eliminated:Integrating from , , givesThus the required mass–velocity relation is
If , this formula would give as . In this interval, . A real rocket retains positive body mass even after its fuel is gone, and collected dust only increases that residual mass. It therefore cannot follow this branch all the way to zero mass: its fuel must run out while . Indeed the hypothetical time integral is integrable at when , so even the formal zero-mass endpoint would occur at finite time.
If , the same relation instead gives as . The mass first decreases, reaches its minimum at , and then increases because dust arrives faster than fuel is expelled. The time integral now diverges at : under indefinitely maintained thrust, approaches asymptotically while stored dust grows without bound. At that limiting speed, thrust balances the dust-loading term , and . This is the physical reason the total rocket mass no longer signals fuel exhaustion. A rocket with a finite initial fuel supply still runs out at finite time and before reaching ; increasing total mass does not create new fuel.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 41 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Take the Minkowski metric with signature and a coupling . For a charged scalar field use the gauge covariant derivativeA scalar electrodynamics Lagrangian isAny real potential bounded below and depending only on the modulus gives gauge invariance. Indeed,The derivative of the phase cancels the shifted gauge field in the first identity; commuting partial derivatives proves the second. These identities verify invariance of every term, including the interaction hidden in the kinetic term.
For an unbroken example choose with and . The minimum is at zero. There is no vector mass term in the quadratic expansion and no Higgs mechanism. Pure electromagnetic theory has a neutral massless spin-one photon with two physical transverse polarizations, equivalently helicities and ; longitudinal and time-component polarizations are gauge redundancies. In the unbroken scalar theory, the same massless photon is accompanied by a spin-zero charged particle and its oppositely charged antiparticle, both of mass . A complex scalar has two real physical degrees of freedom, rather than two unrelated charged species.
For a Higgs example chooseThe vacuum modulus is nonzero. Around one vacuum representative, unitary gauge removes the phase and writes . ThenThus the quadratic spectrum isThe gauge boson is a massive spin-one particle with three polarizations, and is a neutral massive spin-zero Higgs boson. The scalar phase supplies the longitudinal vector polarization; it is not an extra physical massless Goldstone boson. The degree count is unchanged: two massless-vector polarizations plus two scalar degrees become three massive-vector polarizations plus one radial scalar degree. The underlying gauge invariance remains a redundancy of the description.
For the two-charge theory, useand retain the same gauge transformation of . Both derivatives transform with the phase of their own field. A manifestly stable two-charge scalar gauge potential is, for positive , and a nonzero complex constant ,Since has charge , its modulus is gauge-invariant. Expanding its square exhibits the direct couplingIn particular the charge in is , which uses the stated charge ratio. The potential is real, bounded below and has the zero-field minimum, while the kinetic terms have the standard positive signs. A complete example is thereforeThere is genuine direct interaction even with because . In four spacetime dimensions has mass dimension , but the expanded potential contains only quadratic, cubic and quartic field monomials; the cubic coefficient has dimension one. Thus the example is also power-counting renormalizable.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 47 2 iv Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
At , the field equations areWith and static , the second equation holds automatically and the first reduces toFor , put . The finite-energy solution isThis is a rotating charged kink in a spherical sigma model. Its orientation moves around a circle while its energy profile stays at rest. The limiting value gives no localized finite-width kink; larger does not give this finite-energy interpolation.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 47 2 v Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The internal orientation is a periodic collective coordinate with period . Its conjugate momentum is the integrated canonical charge. The Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization for a positively oriented circuit of this angle is, in units ,There is no oscillator turning point and hence no half-integer Maslov correction for this cyclic coordinate. Equivalently, a wavefunction must be single valued. At , the allowed signed charges and leading semiclassical masses in the family are thereforeThe signed integers include both rotation directions and the nonrotating state. Every finite integer gives .
For nonzero theta it is still the canonical charge that is integral, while the mechanical charge is shifted:For the stated family set ; the reversed kink gives the corresponding family. This is the semiclassical charged-kink spectrum with a theta angle. One may equivalently describe the spectrum by fractional mechanical charges instead of integral canonical charges, but the two conventions must not be mixed. The theta periodicity follows by relabeling the integer when . These are leading semiclassical energies; the quantization argument does not assert that quantum fluctuation corrections vanish.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 47 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Use the physical rapidity strip for poles of the two-body S-matrix, and write for scattering rapidity to distinguish it from the theta angle in question 2. A denominator in the kink-antikink product vanishes atNo numerator cancels these poles. For two equal-mass constituents with rapidities , their four-momentum vectors sum toThis gives the relativistic bound-state mass from a rapidity pole. The ordered breather spectrum isIt increases strictly with . The hypothetical state would lie at the two-kink threshold and is not a bound state; it is absent from the pole product. At these couplings and . In particular at weak coupling . This is the Sine-Gordon breather spectrum at reflectionless couplings. At there are no breathers; the subsequent processes involving a physical require .
For two identical neutral particles, exchanging the two outgoing labels does not produce a distinguishable channel. In one spatial dimension the elastic final momenta are the incoming pair, up to interchange. Thus there is one scalar identical-particle amplitude, rather than separately observable transmission and reflection amplitudes.
Put , so the basic amplitude uses . Its poles in the physical strip occur at and . The first is the direct bound-state pole. Choosing constituent rapidities gives real total energy-momentumSince ,Both energy and momentum therefore match an on shell with rapidity . The complementary pole is its crossed-channel partner. At the would-be is a threshold state, so this physical fusion interpretation must not be imposed there.
The bound-state fusion of factorized S-matrices treats a bound particle as its on shell constituents with analytically continued rapidities. If equal-mass particles fuse to at relative rapidity , use constituent rapidities . To scatter a third particle off , multiply its scattering amplitudes with each constituent and take the bound-state residue or projection in the constituent channel. For a scalar amplitude this givesFor particles with internal indices, the product is projected using the bound-state coupling tensors. The heuristic reason is factorized scattering: conserved higher charges prevent particle production and fix the rapidity data, so the third particle scatters through the constituents by successive two-body processes. Consistency of different orders is the Yang-Baxter equation. Without integrability, an independent three-body interaction would invalidate this simple bootstrap product.
For , the constituent shifts are , givingIt is useful to write this Sine-Gordon breather fusion amplitude in explicitly factorized form:To check the reduction, put . Multiplying the shifted factors gives numerator and denominator . Use and to factor them as . The product tends to one at large positive real rapidity, fixing its overall phase in this bootstrap convention.
For , the nearest pole to the real axis is . It is simple and comes from the first factor. In the crossed, or t-channel, the momentum carried between the external particles is their difference. With the metric its invariant isAt the pole, substitute the breather masses:The trigonometric identity is applied with angles and . Thus the exchanged one-particle state is the lightest breather , on its mass shell. This is crossed-channel lightest-breather exchange. The external momenta at a bound-state pole are analytically continued; on shell here means the invariant mass relation and conservation of the continued energy-momentum, not a pole at real physical rapidity. At the more distant central factor has a double pole, but the nearest pole and its interpretation remain unchanged.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 58 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Write for the genuine surface density of a disk, and for its three-dimensional mass density. The delta function in the printed surface density formula belongs to , not to . Introduce a reference length to make logarithms dimensionless. The intended model is the infinite, self-gravitating, scale-free Mestel disk, with no extra source or imposed gravitational field.
The circular speed satisfies . Thus the flat galaxy rotation curve givesA reflection-symmetric harmonic function with this midplane boundary value isVerify this continuation using the Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity. For , set ; thenHence off the astrophysical disk, and reflection gives the lower-half-space solution. Across the astrophysical disk the derivative jumps by . The distributional Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity therefore givesAt the origin the enclosed disk mass tends to zero linearly with radius, so there is no additional central point mass. This verifies the Mestel disk potential-density pair. The astrophysical disk has infinite total mass and a logarithmic Newtonian gravitational potential, so it is not an isolated finite-mass model with Newtonian gravitational potential zero at infinity. The usual scale-free boundary condition is important: the midplane rotation curve alone would also permit an added term , representing an extra uniform sheet without changing the radial circular force. That contribution is excluded in the intended Mestel disk model.
Use a mass-weighted planar galactic distribution function, so is the stellar mass in a small planar phase space element. A number-weighted function instead needs the stellar mass factor when computing . Assume a steady collisionless stellar system and isotropy in the two in-plane velocity components. Put and write . The stationary Collisionless Boltzmann equation becomesSince this holds in every velocity direction, . In coordinates with , this is exactly . Therefore the planar isotropic distribution is , where is the specific orbital energy. Stationarity is essential; instantaneous isotropy alone would not imply this result.
Integrating over the two-dimensional velocity plane gives the planar isotropic distribution inversion:On the astrophysical disk , so . Differentiate the integral with respect to its lower limit:The boundary value as verifies the integrated equation as well as its derivative. Choosing the implicit length unit recovers the printed normalization. Changing the additive energy zero changes this prefactor accordingly.
At a fixed radius, the normalized velocity density isIt is a product of centered Gaussian distributions. Differentiating the supplied Gaussian integral with respect to its coefficient gives the second moments, and odd moments vanish. Thus the in-plane velocity dispersions areAn exactly planar astrophysical disk has and . The nonzero circular speed is a property of the force field, not a statement that this hot stellar distribution has net rotation.
Reversing every retrograde star folds the azimuthal Gaussian to a half-normal distribution. Equivalently the new steady galactic distribution function is , because and are integrals of the motion. Its density and even velocity moments are unchanged. Its streaming velocity isThis maximally prograde stellar distribution still has radial motion and a spread of azimuthal speeds; it does not place every star on a circular orbit. In particular while . The mean speed is smaller than the root-mean-square speed , which explains why it is not the circular speed.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 58 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Use a local, homogeneous razor-thin disk approximation in a frame rotating with constant . The unperturbed planar velocity is zero in this frame, and the large-scale gravitational and centrifugal forces balance. Neglect viscosity, magnetic fields, thickness and background gradients across a wavelength. Take small planar disturbances, with wavelength short compared with the galaxy's background scale but long enough for a fluid description. The barotropic closure of a razor-thin disk is , with fixed and a positive derivativeSolid-body rotation has no shear and has radial epicyclic frequency . By rotational symmetry of the local model choose a wavevector along , and write perturbations proportional to .
Let be the surface density, -velocity, -velocity and Newtonian gravitational potential amplitudes. The linearized continuity equation and Euler equations with the Coriolis force areThe perturbing Newtonian gravitational potential solves the Poisson equation for Newtonian gravityIts decaying solution is proportional to . The jump in its derivative is , giving the razor-thin disk Poisson kernelEliminating from the two momentum equations, and using , gives the density-wave branchThe complete linear system also has a zero-frequency balanced mode; it is not the growing density-wave branch, and division by in this elimination excludes it. The result is the uniformly rotating gas-sheet dispersion relation: pressure opposes compression at large wavenumber, self-gravity promotes compression, and rotation provides epicyclic support.
A mode is exponentially unstable when . With and , this occurs atThe uniform perturbation is marginal rather than growing in this local calculation. With , rotation fails to stabilize sufficiently short waves:These limits show why both pressure and rotation are needed for stability at all wavelengths.
For nonzero pressure and rotation, put . Complete the square:Its minimum lies at . Thus a growing mode exists precisely whenThe printed inequality has the opposite physical meaning: it is the condition for no exponentially growing density wave. Equality is marginal. In the usual gas Toomre stability criterion, , so instability is and stability is . The unstable wavenumber band of a rotating gas sheet iswhen .
If and remain fixed while decreases slowly, first reach marginality atThe first wavelength to become unstable just below this threshold is the marginal fragmentation wavelength of a rotating sheet:Density maxima are separated by approximately this wavelength. The expected fragment size is of this order; an overdense half-wave has width about . Linear theory fixes a preferred wavelength, not an exact nonlinear clump radius or shape. Further cooling shifts the fastest-growing wavelength to . A rough fragment mass is consequently of order , with a geometrical factor depending on the nonlinear fragmentation pattern.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 58 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Use the paper's positive binding-energy convention ; the physical Newtonian gravitational potential energy is . Assume positive masses, an isolated system, and no collision during the time interval under consideration. Differentiate half the scalar moment of inertia, , twice:Group the force term into unordered pairs. The force on particle from is ; the two contributions to the virial sum are thereforeAdding them proves the instantaneous virial theorem identityNo time average is needed for this form. A vanishing average of would require additional boundedness assumptions.
For the pairwise moment-of-inertia identity, expand the squared pair distances:The last term vanishes in the centre of mass frame, givingLet , and label the two smallest masses . If , every term in is at most , so . One pair attains , and its mass product is at least , so . HenceThese constants show the minimum-separation binding-energy bounds: inverse binding energy is comparable to the nearest-pair distance, independently of configuration.
Similarly, every separation is at most and at least one pair attains . The pairwise identity gives the maximum-separation inertia boundsBoth lower bounds rely on actual extremal separations, rather than an arbitrary numerical lower or upper estimate for all the pair distances.
Negative energy does not imply a positive lower bound on the minimum separation. The printed request is false if it is meant to exclude close approaches or collisions; the trivial bound says nothing of that kind. In fact and give , which, combined with , proves the negative-energy minimum-separation upper boundThis ensures at least one close pair, not confinement of every particle or prevention of collision.
An explicit negative-energy gravitational collision is a pair initially at rest with separation . Its total energy is . For reduced mass , its relative radial equation isThe separation decreases to zero in the finite timeBefore that time the motion is a regular Newtonian solution, yet its separation has no positive infimum. Even at fixed negative energy, bound Kepler orbits with eccentricity approaching one have arbitrarily small pericentre distance. Thus a missing angular momentum or collision-exclusion hypothesis cannot be supplied by the energy sign alone.
For , the instantaneous virial theorem gives . Integrating twice from any regular time givesUsing , obtain the positive-energy linear diameter growth boundwhenever the numerator is nonnegative. Consequently, for a solution existing for arbitrarily large future times,This is the precise at-least-linear expansion statement. It does not assert that is monotone at every instant, nor that all individual particles escape. The large-time conclusion presupposes continued existence of the trajectory; the inequality itself holds on every nonsingular time interval.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 58 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Put and use energy and angular momentum per unit particle mass. The Kepler orbit equation is . HenceThus and are integrals of motion. Splitting the velocity into radial and transverse parts, , gives the Kepler radial energy equationHere denotes the derivative of the scalar radius, unlike .
For the Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector, differentiate directly:The vector triple-product identity yieldsThe terms cancel, proving every component of is conserved.
Write and for a monotone radial orbit time transformation. The chain rule givesImpose , equivalentlyMultiplying the radial energy equation by then givesThis is a transformation along each trajectory; the new clock is obtained by integrating its radius-dependent rate.
For the Kepler–harmonic radial duality, take the old inverse-radius term as the new constant energy, . On a positive-radius branch , soThe remaining term is minus the new Newtonian gravitational potential:For this is an attractive isotropic harmonic oscillator with . For it is an inverted oscillator, and for the Newtonian gravitational potential vanishes. Calling it a confining oscillator therefore requires a bound original Kepler orbit.
For the angular reconstruction of a radial orbit transformation, choose the new angle by . The same then supplies its centrifugal term. From , the transformation is ; in the harmonic case this gives up to a constant. Keeping the old angle unchanged would not in general preserve the angular momentum used in the displayed transformed radial equation.
For the second transformation use the explicit displayed split of the energy terms. It assigns weight to and to ; the surrounding printed prose interchanges these weights. Define the transformed quantities consistently byTheir difference is exactly , so they give the same transformed radial energy equation.
Let , , and . Constancy of the new energy imposesFor the standard regular isochrone branch take , , and . The positive-radius root isFor it is monotone. The corresponding clock is also regular there:With and , rationalization gives . Eliminate using :where one possible identification isThis is the Kepler–isochrone radial transformation to the spherical isochrone model, up to the additive energy constant .
The attractive branch of the Kepler–isochrone transformation requires a suitable parameter domain. The displayed square root needs , and the positive-root branch used above needs , . An attractive regular isochrone also needs and . For bound original orbits a convenient domain is , , : it satisfies all these requirements and gives . For one may instead take , with ; these map to unbound attractive isochrone orbits. Other parameter choices can produce a repulsive Newtonian gravitational potential or a different branch, so no unrestricted real-parameter statement is justified. The singular algebraic case is the harmonic transformation already handled separately. The angular reconstruction likewise completes the isochrone radial solution into a central-force orbit.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 50 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Choose boundary states with nonzero overlap with the lowest-energy state in the vacuum sector and in the one-kink topological sector . In a finite spatial box, a fixed scalar field configuration eigenstate may be used formally, with temporal endpoints equal to the chosen configuration. More generally, smear the endpoints with wavefunctionals . Their unitary time evolution kernels areThe inner scalar field path integral remains in the chosen topological sector, with . A zero-total-momentum projection can be included to select the rest state; alternatively, the translational prefactor does not change the large-time exponential. After a Wick rotation to physical Euclidean time , the energy eigenstate expansion gives . Thus the exact vacuum-subtracted soliton mass isEquivalently it is at large time with a damping prescription. The ratio subtracts the vacuum energy; the Hamiltonian operator and action here are the fully regulated and renormalized ones, not merely their classical approximations.
With the dimensionless coordinates of this paper, the correctly normalized classical action isFor the static Sine-Gordon kink, and , so . Write . Expanding and integrating by parts givesThe first variation is , plus boundary terms. It vanishes because the kink satisfies the Euler-Lagrange field equation and the fluctuations have the prescribed temporal endpoints and admissible spatial boundary behavior. This is the principle of stationary action, not a symmetry assumption about .
The printed expansion omits despite the stated Lagrangian density. Its displayed form is the expansion of ; it is not the physical at arbitrary coupling. Alternatively, writing puts the quadratic term in canonical normalization, while leaving the classical term unchanged. This normalization repair does not change or the physical fluctuation frequencies.
The Sine-Gordon kink fluctuation operator has the useful factorizationIt is nonnegative, and gives the normalized translational zero mode of a sine-Gordon kink:A displacement changes by . Thus the zero mode in field theory is the position collective coordinate of the kink, reflecting translation invariance. It has no restoring force and no oscillator zero-point energy. Integrate that collective coordinate separately rather than inserting a zero factor into the Gaussian functional determinant.
Sine-Gordon kink fluctuation potential and normalized translational zero mode
. In the Gaussian fluctuation approximation, the formal oscillator contribution to the one-loop soliton mass correction, before adding any counterterm, isUse a common regulator for the two sums, include all discrete modes, and treat the translation mode as above. The vacuum sum is essential: subtracting only classical vacuum energy would leave an extensive oscillator energy. A periodic fluctuation and its derivative are matched at the two ends of the large box; the one-kink background lies in the twisted topological sector, and its infinite-line profile is accurate up to exponentially small boundary corrections.
For a continuum scattering wavefunction, equality of its two asymptotic values gives the periodic-box phase-shift quantizationAway from the threshold, expand at a matched mode number:Since consecutive free wave numbers are separated by , replacing the continuum-mode sum by an integral proves the displayed continuum contribution:The ultraviolet cutoff is retained until the counterterm is added.
There is a finite threshold issue if this expression is identified with the complete oscillator correction. It can be settled directly using the factorization: a continuum eigenfunction is . Its transmission phase obeyswith the odd phase branch that tends to zero at large . For , the continuum roots have labels ; there is no periodic continuum root at , since the limiting eigenfunction has opposite signs at the two ends. The bound state at replaces the free oscillator with . Consequently, in mode-number regularization of soliton masses,The PDF's continuum-only formula misses this finite under this standard phase and mode-counting convention. It has the correct logarithmic ultraviolet divergence, but the missing term is not suppressed by large . Changing the phase branch requires changing the mode labels and endpoint terms consistently; it cannot erase a physical mode from the formal spectrum sum.
At high momentum, , so both expressions have divergent part . The canonical field has a quartic interaction with coupling . Its vacuum tadpole diagram shifts the squared mass by , whereThe Sine-Gordon vacuum tadpole counterterm has and adds potential energy density . Since , its vacuum-subtracted kink energy iswhich cancels the logarithmic ultraviolet divergence. Finite parts require a specified renormalization condition. As a consistency check, with this tadpole subtraction and matched mode-number cutoff, integration by parts yieldsThe complete semiclassical soliton mass is then in that convention. This last finite result uses the bound-mode term and is additional to the requested ultraviolet cancellation.
