The solutions use natural units and the Minkowski metric . In question 1, is exactly the paper's convention: it contains no factor . The qualifications in iii, d and d distinguish the printed expressions from the results of charge conservation, identical final-state symmetry factors and fermionic time ordering.
For , the invariant scattering amplitude from the tree-level Feynman diagram in i has a pole at . The intermediate heavy antiparticle can go on shell and live for a time of order its mean lifetime. Near this scattering resonance, inserting a single self-energy is no longer a uniformly small correction. Dyson resummation gives, to leading accuracy in a narrow decay width,
Here is understood as the renormalized resonance mass; the real self-energy shifts the original pole position. The imaginary term removes the unphysical divergence of the fixed-order invariant scattering amplitude.
For equal incoming and outgoing light masses, the two-body momentum ratio cancels in the cross section. The angle-independent invariant scattering amplitude, integrated over the full solid angle with the identical final-state symmetry factor , gives . Thus the Breit-Wigner resonance cross section is
At it reproduces . At the resonance peak,
This is also for , the elastic identical-boson S wave partial-wave unitarity limit when this is the only open decay channel. The approximation assumes and a resonance sufficiently far from threshold for the width to vary slowly across it.
If one mechanically uses the unsymmetrized from d, the same displayed Breit-Wigner resonance cross section would have that doubled width and predict a peak . This is the literal-width substitution, rather than the consistent physical result: the given high-energy cross section already includes the identical-final-particle factor that the printed decay width integral omits.