Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 ib Paper 2 7C Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Choose the incident photon along the direction. Conservation of four-momentum preserves the squared total energy invariant . Initially,In the centre-of-momentum frame let the outgoing photon energy be ; the larger particle has opposite momentum magnitude and energy . ThusConversely, whenever , the positive value constructs a final state with the required invariant, which can be boosted to the laboratory frame. The limiting photon excitation threshold with a soft final photon is thereforeStrictly, an outgoing physical photon requires ; the printed minimum is the threshold infimum approached as the final photon becomes soft.