Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 ii Paper 1 33B c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Rotational invariance gives . Direct calculation givesTake ; angular-momentum brackets imply , and central symmetry gives . Hence are in involution.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 ii Paper 4 36D a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Insert and into the Lorentz force and use vector identities plus Faraday's law. Rearrangement gives . Here is field momentum density and is the Maxwell stress tensor, whose surface traction transports momentum.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 ii Paper 4 39C a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 ii Paper 4 39C b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Past exam of the medical physics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 Paper 1 3 d Solution 2026-10-20
TODO: Biology deferred at the user's request: biological tracer behavior and clinical PET applications.
The generic physics of positron emission tomography uses electron-positron annihilation. A slowly moving electron-positron pair predominantly produces two nearly opposite photons with energy close to each. A ring of detectors records approximately simultaneous interactions; a coincidence identifies a coincidence line of response along which an annihilation could have occurred. Finite Positron travel before annihilation and nonzero pair momentum limit how directly this line identifies the original emission location.
Many such measurements constrain an emission distribution through a tomography model. Attenuation, scattered coincidences, unrelated random coincidences, finite detector resolution and dead time alter the observed counts and require calibration or modeling. With useful time-of-flight information, the arrival-time difference further localizes position along the line: a timing uncertainty corresponds to a position scale . The coincidence data therefore provide spatial constraints, rather than each event directly supplying a complete three-dimensional image point.
A molecule is an electrically neutral bound assembly of more than one atom. It can contain identical atoms, as in , or different atoms, as in . Discrete molecules are not a universal description of matter: an extended ionic crystal does not consist of separate neutral molecules corresponding to each empirical formula unit. The IUPAC definition also specifies binding sufficient to support a vibrational state.[ref]
Elasticity is a body's tendency to recover its original configuration when the deforming force is removed. Within a linear regime, Hooke's law makes stress proportional to strain, but elasticity does not require exact linearity. The elastic limit matters: permanent plastic deformation is a different response.
Inertia is the property expressed by Newton's first law: without a resultant external force, a body's velocity remains constant in an inertial frame of reference. Mass measures translational inertia. It is not a force acting against motion, and a moving body does not require a continuing forward force merely to keep moving.
An initially localized escaping electron occupies a superposition of lead momentum states. In a uniform free one-dimensional lead,A packet centered at moves with group velocity and generally spreads because its components have different velocities. For an initially unchirped minimum-uncertainty Gaussian wave packet,This illustrates dispersive evolution; the actual emission contact determines and whether only outward-propagating components are appreciable. It does not instantaneously become a single lead plane wave.
A single-electron transistor used as a sensitive electrometer exploits Coulomb blockade: a nearby charge shifts the offset and therefore the conductance peaks. This requires stable calibrated capacitances and low charge noise, rather than merely a small conductor.
For standard deviations of position and momentum,Confinement to a region of size requires a momentum spread of order , hence kinetic energy of order . A sufficiently small semiconducting nanocrystal therefore has discrete energy levels and an optical edge shifted above the bulk band gap.
An illustrative strong-confinement model iswhere is a geometry-dependent number of order unity. The positive confinement contribution grows as ; electron-hole Coulomb interaction contributes an attractive term of order . The uncertainty principle motivates the scale, not the exact coefficient or oscillator strength. Strong size dependence occurs near the exciton Bohr radius. Finite barriers, dielectric mismatch and surface states modify this model, while size distributions broaden ensemble spectra.
Refraction changes the propagation direction, and hence the momentum, of transmitted light. The particle receives the opposite momentum change by conservation of momentum. For a ray carrying power , a useful force scale iswith corrections for reflected rays and their momentum fluxes. Here is the surrounding refractive index; this is a ray-force scaling rather than a complete electromagnetic stress calculation.
For fixed geometry and refractive indices, , so the force contribution is proportional to the local intensity . Refraction toward the normal on entry and away from the normal on exit must both be included: a force inferred from only the first interface can have the wrong direction.
The specified size is larger than the wavelength, so a geometrical optics treatment is appropriate despite the generic “nanoparticle” label. A dipole/Rayleigh-particle formula would use the opposite size limit.
The lighter product receives the fraction of the two massive products' kinetic energy. Neglecting photon momentum, conservation of momentum gives equal and opposite daughter momenta, . In the nonrelativistic approximation,Hence andThis partitions kinetic energy after any stipulated photon energy has been removed from the available Q value. It does not assign the complete mass-defect energy to the light particle.
Past exam of the nuclear and particle physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 2 b Solution 2026-10-25
The magnetic rigidity gives the momentum, the bending direction gives the sign of electric charge, and the calorimetric energy then gives the mass. For planar tracks perpendicular to a uniform magnetic field, the Lorentz force and circular motion giveTrace each track away from its production or decay vertex. With the magnetic field into the page, a positive track bends counterclockwise and a negative track bends clockwise. For example, a positive particle initially travelling left accelerates downwards. The known incoming negative pion fixes the sign convention experimentally. A radius alone does not distinguish electric charge signs.
For a calibrated total energy , the relativistic energy-momentum relation givesIf the calorimeter instead supplies only kinetic energy , solve to obtainCompare with candidate pion, kaon, and proton masses, together with the electric charge sign and shower behavior. An electron makes an electromagnetic shower; a muon is penetrating; a hadron generally requires a hadronic calorimeter and its own calibration. If either energy escapes or the response is uncalibrated, simply substituting a deposited signal for need not identify the particle correctly. The absent figure prevents attaching identities to individual drawn tracks, but the requested identification procedure does not require its geometry.
Past exam of the nuclear and particle physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 2 c Solution 2026-10-25
The labels X and Y cannot be uniquely assigned from the surviving text: their decay vertices and daughter tracks were contained in the missing figure. The available conservation laws nevertheless specify how the assignment would be obtained.
The initial state has , with denoting strangeness. At a primary strong interaction vertex all three numbers must be reproduced. A final Lambda baryon or Sigma baryon has , and therefore needs accompanying , for example a neutral kaon or a positive kaon , with the remaining electric charge balanced. At later weak interaction decay vertices, strangeness need not be conserved; it would be wrong to enforce it there.
A displaced pair with the appropriate invariant mass identifies . A displaced pair can identify after an invariant mass and kinematic check. For a candidate radiative Sigma-to-Lambda transition, the neutral parent satisfiesin natural units. Its photon energy in the parent rest frame is . With known charged four-momenta, each unobserved neutral momentum is the difference between the incoming and visible outgoing momenta at its vertex; its inferred direction must agree with the dashed segment.
This information cannot establish which dashed segment was called X. For a concrete ambiguity, bothobey the primary electric charge, baryon number, and strangeness constraints and can yield a neutral kaon decay plus a displaced Lambda baryon decay. Their distinct neutral segments and the extra photon would be resolved by the missing topology and kinematics. The supplied possible Sigma baryon decay alone is insufficient to label X and Y. A labelled answer is therefore a source gap, rather than a completed identification.
Past exam of the nuclear and particle physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 2 e Solution 2026-10-25
A constant-width Breit-Wigner resonance cross section is the simplest nonrelativistic curve; a P-wave scattering width and relativistic kinematics explain important expected distortions. A comparison to specific observed deviations cannot be made without the missing plot.
Write for the centre-of-mass frame kinetic energy, for the reduced mass, and for the relative wave number. The nonrelativistic relations areFor an isolated particle resonance of spin , averaging over the initial proton spin and using the zero pion spin givesFor the nearly elastic state, and , soFreezing at gives a symmetric Lorentzian centered at , with full width at half maximum and height . This is the local curve to sketch. If the displayed variable is the beam kinetic energy , its width is within this nonrelativistic approximation. Keeping changes the prefactor and hence the symmetry. Extending a constant-width approximation all the way to produces a spurious divergence, so it is not a valid threshold model.
The pion has intrinsic parity and the proton has . The positive parity and of the Delta baryon require odd orbital angular momentum, with the lowest choice . The finite-range partial-wave threshold law gives near threshold. Inserting this in the elastic numerator makes away from the pole as , rather than diverging. Equivalently the elastic scattering phase shift has , and . Away from threshold, form factors and other channels modify the simple cubic width.
At the illustrative peak of part (d), the incident pion kinetic energy is comparable to its rest energy, so a nonrelativistic pion treatment is already inaccurate. The exact relative momentum iswith . Relative to the symmetric local estimate, this changes the horizontal conversion, peak normalization and tails. The illustrative peak has , giving before small inelastic effects.
Finally, nonresonant partial waves can interfere with the resonant scattering amplitude, higher particle resonances and inelastic scattering channels can enter, and instrumental resolution can broaden a measured peak. These are physically distinct possible deviations; the missing data do not justify claiming any particular one was actually observed. Both the missing graphical overlay and its data-specific explanation remain source gaps.
Past exam of the nuclear and particle physics course of the University of Oxford 2022 1 c Solution 2026-10-25
Put . In natural units, a stationary target proton and a beam proton of total energy have the Mandelstam invariantAt fixed-target production threshold the final particles have zero relative momentum in their centre-of-mass frame, so . Restoring , the total beam energy and its kinetic energy areUsing rounded masses in , , gives and .
One possible strong interaction quark-line flavour rearrangement isIt needs newly created and pairs, with no net change of any quark flavor. For example, keep the first as the outgoing proton; allocate the second incoming and the new to , the remaining incoming and new to , and the new to . Two gluon splittings illustrate this flow. This is a possible hadronization topology, not a unique perturbative description of the proton collision.
After several short mean lifetimes, the surviving coherent beam is approximately . In ordinary matter the forward scattering amplitudes of and differ. For example, the in a neutral antikaon can enter a strange baryon through strong absorption; the opposite strangeness assignment has different available channels. If their forward transmission amplitudes through a thin block are and , respectively, thenThus the transmitted forward beam contains a regenerated short-lived component, with prompt two-pion decays after the block. Differential absorption changes the intensities as well as the relative phase. Scattered particles outside the forward beam can provide an incoherent component. This neutral kaon regeneration does not require CP violation: the material itself distinguishes matter and antimatter.
Past exam of the nuclear and particle physics course of the University of Oxford 2022 2 d Solution 2026-10-25
Feynman diagrams organize the perturbative calculation of the matrix element in Fermi's golden rule. Each external line labels an incoming or outgoing particle state; each internal line contributes a propagator for a generally off-shell intermediate field; and each interaction vertex contributes a coupling and the appropriate spin, momentum and internal-symmetry structure. All indistinguishable allowed diagrams must be summed as probability amplitudes before taking the absolute square, so their interference contributes to the rate.
In the radiative pion decay diagram in part (b), solid arrowed lines are fermions; the wavy line joining the hadronic and leptonic vertices is a W boson propagator; and the wavy outgoing line is an external photon. Arrows track fermion number, so an outgoing antimuon has an arrow towards its production vertex. Each vertex conserves four-momentum; an internal propagator need not satisfy the on-shell energy–momentum relation. A closed loop Feynman diagram additionally requires an integration over an internal four-momentum.
The final Lorentz-invariant phase space, conservation Dirac delta functions, and the initial-state normalization or incident flux turn the squared scattering amplitude into a decay rate or cross section. A diagram supplies the dynamics; it is not itself the final density of states.
Past exam of the nuclear and particle physics course of the University of Oxford 2022 2 e Solution 2026-10-25
The following are the leading quantum electrodynamics diagrams. Solid arrows indicate fermion-number flow, and wavy lines indicate photons. The heavy source line represents a charged nucleus; its recoil allows four-momentum conservation.
For Compton scattering, , there are two diagrams: absorption of the incident photon followed along the electron line by emission of the outgoing photon, and the opposite ordering. These are the - and -channel electron propagators. Both scattering amplitudes are order .
For bremsstrahlung, , a virtual photon transfers momentum between the electron and the source. The real photon is emitted before or after this interaction along the electron line. These two dominant external-field diagrams have scattering amplitudes of order . A full finite-mass charged-target calculation also includes radiation from the target; it is suppressed in the heavy stationary-source approximation used here.
For nuclear-field pair production, , crossing the preceding diagrams gives two order- contributions, with the incoming real photon and the exchanged virtual photon in either order along the pair's fermion line. An isolated real photon cannot produce a massive pair in vacuum: its invariant squared mass is zero, whereas the pair has invariant squared mass at least . The source absorbs recoil momentum.
Past exam of the optics and electrodynamics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 4 Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Gauge freedom. The magnetic vector potential satisfies . The transformationleaves unchanged because the curl of a gradient is zero. For time-dependent fields, transform the electric scalar potential as as well, so that is unchanged. The scalar must have the regularity and single-valuedness appropriate to the physical region and its boundary conditions. Local values of therefore depend on the gauge transformation.
Gauge and nonzero component. In the standard axisymmetric Coulomb gauge representative for the long-solenoid approximation,The divergence vanishes since is independent of the azimuth. Inside, this agrees with the usual symmetric gauge representative . The Coulomb gauge condition alone does not force the other two components to vanish; the symmetry, regularity and customary boundary choice select this representative from the remaining gauge freedom.
Radial dependence. Write the interior magnetic field as , where for a vacuum solenoid of solenoid turn density . Its exterior magnetic field vanishes in the infinitely long idealization. Applying Stokes theorem to a coaxial circle gives . Therefore the Coulomb-gauge vector potential of a long solenoid isIt grows linearly inside, is continuous at , and decays as outside. Although its exterior curl is zero, its circulation is the enclosed magnetic flux . No regular single-valued gauge function removes it throughout the exterior while preserving this circulation.
Electric field of the rotating charged surface. For clarity retain absolute permittivity and permeability in the cylinder formulae; setting them to unity gives the rationalized-unit convention in the question. If the stated unity means relative material constants in SI, use instead. Assume prescribed charge densities in the laboratory frame and the nonrelativistic, steady-rotation model.
The axisymmetric surface charge is stationary as a distribution even while the material rotates. A Gaussian cylinder of length has enclosed charge zero for and for . Gauss's law therefore givesThe radial electric field jumps from zero to at the surface and then decays as . Its direction reverses for negative . The angular velocity does not enter this electric-field result for a specified surface charge.
Magnetic field of the volume-charged cylinder. A shell of radius and thickness has surface charge , azimuthal surface current , and the field of an infinite solenoid: inside that shell and zero outside it. At radius , only shells with contribute. Thus the magnetic field of a rotating charged solid cylinder isWith no applied background magnetic field, outside. The profile is parabolic, largest on the axis and zero at the boundary. The sign follows . As a check, the current density is , and Ampère's circuital law gives , as required.
Electron impulse when the current is switched off. Choose positive so the initial magnetic flux is along . Faraday's law of induction gives, outside the solenoid,For an electron of electric charge , treat its position as fixed while the short pulse acts. The inductive impulse outside a switched solenoid isConsequently the nonrelativistic final velocity isThe induced electric field circulates in the positive azimuthal direction while a positive flux decreases, so the electron accelerates in the negative direction. Once the pulse has passed, there is no exterior field and it travels along the tangent at the impulse point, rather than continuing in a circular orbit. If the resulting momentum is relativistic, use instead. The sudden-switch result assumes negligible displacement during the pulse and the usual quasistatic electromagnetic induction approximation; “instantaneous” switching does not mean instantaneous propagation of fields to arbitrary distance.
One can check the sign using conserved canonical angular momentum: axial symmetry conserves . Initially , and finally , so .
Interferometric measurement at constant current. Use a coherent electron beam split into two paths passing on opposite sides of a shielded long solenoid, then recombine them to form interference fringes. Keep the current constant during the passage and suppress leakage fields on the paths. In the Aharonov-Bohm effect, the phase difference due to the magnetic vector potential is the closed-loop integralThe overall sign reverses if the path orientation is reversed. The displacement in fringe periods is , so the measured fringe shift is linear in and repeats whenA gauge transformation adds a gradient whose closed-loop integral vanishes for a single-valued . Endpoint changes in electron wavefunction phase cancel in the interference measurement. The measured Aharonov-Bohm phase is therefore gauge invariant: it determines the flux, or equivalently the circulation of . In the chosen Coulomb gauge this implies , but the experiment does not select or measure a unique local vector potential independently of gauge.
Far field of the rotating sphere. Interpret uniform charge as uniform volume charge of total , and take . The magnetic dipole moment of a rigidly rotating charge distribution isIts axial component is . For a solid sphere, and , soThe magnetic field of a rotating charged spherical body is a static magnetic dipole field at large distances:In particular, . Both the angular mean of the magnitude and its root mean square therefore scale as ; the latter is . The angular average of the vector is zero, which is different from average strength. Steady rotation leaves the charge and current distributions stationary, so this is magnetostatics, not a radiative field. If uniform charge instead means a thin spherical surface, replace the dipole moment by ; the angular pattern and scaling are unchanged.
For an autonomous Lagrangian, the Euler-Lagrange equations implyIndeed, differentiating the expression cancels the acceleration terms, leaving , which vanishes. Here is quadratic in the velocities, so . Thus the conserved energy isThe azimuth is a cyclic coordinate. Its conjugate momentum is constant:Therefore is constant as well. Physically, is the vertical component of angular momentum.
Put . Logarithmic differentiation givesThereforeso the appropriate potential energy is . The wavefunction never vanishes, so no other time-independent potential gives the same equation for this precise phase choice.
The squared modulus isIt changes width and height with time, so this is not a stationary state. Its integral is the constant ; multiplying the wavefunction by normalizes it. The normalized Gaussian wave packet stays centred at zero but spreads, with position variance . It represents a localized free particle with a spread of momenta, rather than an energy eigenstate. Free Gaussian wave packet evolution broadens the packet even with zero mean momentum.
Put . Logarithmic differentiation givesThereforeso the appropriate potential energy is . The wavefunction never vanishes, so no other time-independent potential gives the same equation for this precise phase choice.
The squared modulus isIt changes width and height with time, so this is not a stationary state. Its integral is the constant ; multiplying the wavefunction by normalizes it. The normalized Gaussian wave packet stays centred at zero but spreads, with position variance . It represents a localized free particle with a spread of momenta, rather than an energy eigenstate. Free Gaussian wave packet evolution broadens the packet even with zero mean momentum.


