Past exam of the physics 1 paper of the University of Oxford / 2019 resit / 9 / Solution

For a particle of rest mass $m_0$ and velocity $\mathbf{u}$, the relativistic energy and momentum areFor a photon of wavelength $\lambda$ travelling along $\hat{\mathbf{n}}$,Here $h$ is Planck constant and $c$ is the speed of light.

Let $\epsilon$ and ${\epsilon }^{\prime }$ be the incident and scattered photon energies. The stationary electron initially has energy $m_e{c}^2$. By four-momentum conservation, its final energy and momentum areUse the electron's relativistic energy-momentum relation, rather than assuming its recoil is nonrelativistic:Cancelling common terms givesSince $\lambda =hc/\epsilon$, the Compton wavelength shift isThe word elastic here means that the final electron has the same rest mass as initially and the complete photon-electron system conserves total energy; the photon alone loses energy to recoil.

For backscattering, $1-\cos \theta =2$, and henceChoose the incident direction as $+x$, so that the scattered photon travels in the $-x$ direction. An observer moving with velocity $+\beta c\hat{\mathbf{x}}$ meets that photon head-on. The Lorentz transformation of four-momentum gives the observed energyThis is the approaching-observer relativistic Doppler effect. Set $D=\epsilon /{\epsilon }^{\prime }=2.511/0.511$ and solve:The observer must move opposite to the scattered photon, along the original incident direction, at approximately $0.9205c$. Moving with the scattered photon would redshift it instead.