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For a charged Dirac particle, incoming momenta $p,k$ and outgoing momenta $p^{\prime },k^{\prime }$ obey $p+k=p^{\prime }+k^{\prime }$. The two QED diagrams have internal fermion momenta $p+k$ and $p-k^{\prime }$, giving $s$ and $u$ channels. The amplitude is proportional to $\bar{u}(p^{\prime })[/{ϵ}^{\prime \ast }R(p+k)/ϵ+/ϵR(p-k^{\prime })/{ϵ}^{\prime \ast }]u(p)$, where $R(q)=(/q+m)/(q^2-m^2+i0)$. It is related to particle-antiparticle two-photon annihilation by crossing symmetry, with appropriate changes to external wavefunctions and conjugations.

For the Higgs doublet vacuum $(0,v{)}^T/\sqrt{2}$, the neutral gauge-boson mass matrix in $(W^3,B)$ is $(v^2/4)\left(\begin{array}{cc}{g}^2& -g{g}^{\prime }\\ -g{g}^{\prime }& g^{\prime 2}\end{array}\right)$. Its zero eigenvector is proportional to $(g^{\prime },g)$, the photon; the perpendicular vector is the Z boson. The charged fields $W^{\pm }=(W^1\mp i{W}^2)/\sqrt{2}$ have the stated W boson mass. Thus $m_W=m_Z\cos {\theta }_W$, where ${\theta }_W$ is the Weinberg angle. The unbroken charge generator annihilates the vacuum and explains the zero eigenvalue.

The two photon orders in a tree-level charged-fermion amplitude must be summed. Contracting one photon vertex with its momentum writes the contracted slash as a difference of inverse Dirac propagators. The external Dirac equations remove the on shell inverse factors; the two remaining terms have equal size and opposite sign. Thus the sum vanishes under the momentum replacement although individual diagrams generally do not. This implements the gauge equivalence of photon polarization vectors.

Two first-class constraints in Maxwell theory remove four phase-space variables from the eight variables of a four-component potential and its momenta. The remaining four phase-space variables form two canonical pairs. In radiation gauge these are transverse polarization modes; circular combinations have helicity $+1$ and $-1$. Auxiliary covariant-gauge components do not add physical photon states.

An extra relativistic neutrino that decouples before ordinary neutrinos misses two stages of plasma heating. Until ordinary decoupling, entropy conservation gives a temperature ratio $(43/(4g_d){)}^{1/3}$. Electron-positron annihilation then heats photons but neither neutrino population, multiplying the ratio by $(4/11{)}^{1/3}$. Here $g_d$ counts the coupled bath at the extra species' decoupling, with no subsequent exotic entropy injection.