Past exam of the theoretical physics II course of the University of Cambridge / 2014 / Paper 1 / 2 / b / Solution

Let $I=m{R}^2$, $T=t-t^{\prime }>0$, and $\Delta =\theta -{\theta }^{\prime }$. Periodic angular wave functions have modes $e^{il\theta }/\sqrt{2\pi }$ with integer $l$ and energies ${\hslash }^2{l}^2/(2I)$. Normalizing the kernel with respect to $d{\theta }^{\prime }$ givesIf the integration measure is arc length $Rd{\theta }^{\prime }$, the corresponding kernel is $K_{\theta }/R$. This measure choice accounts for the otherwise ambiguous radius prefactor.