Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 ib Paper 1 15A Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 ia Paper 4 10A c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 ia Paper 4 12B a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-07
Use metric signature , as required by the sign of the scalar product in this question. For a massive particle, the four-momentum isFor a photon of positive frequency and direction , the Planck constant gives andA future-pointing timelike four-vector has and in this signature. The ordinary Euclidean Cauchy-Schwarz inequality yieldsThis is stronger than the requested nonnegative inequality. For an electron and a positron of rest mass , their future-pointing timelike four-momenta have . Thuswhich cannot equal the null norm of a single photon. Four-momentum conservation forbids spontaneous photon decay into an electron-positron pair in vacuum. An external body or field able to exchange momentum would be a different system.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 ia Paper 4 4C Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
Use the Minkowski metric convention . A particle's four-momentum is , with for rest mass . For a photon, its energy and wavelength obey , and its four-momentum is null. Here is the Planck constant.
The initially stationary electron has . Choose the scattering plane as the plane. The incoming and outgoing photon four-momenta areBy four-momentum conservation, the final electron has . Its rest mass is unchanged, so the relativistic energy-momentum relation gives . Since , expansion yieldsorMultiplying through gives the Compton scattering shift:It is nonnegative and vanishes for forward scattering, consistent with the recoil energy being supplied by the photon.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 64 1 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
For the Rayleigh-Jeans spectrum of a finite blackbody disk, the Rayleigh-Jeans law replaces by . Here is the Planck constant and the Boltzmann constant. The multitemperature blackbody disk therefore hasFor example, setting makes its frequency-independent coefficient proportional to the finite dimensionless integralAlthough the exact effective temperature vanishes at the inner edge, the very narrow cold rim where the Rayleigh-Jeans law fails makes a negligible contribution in this limit. More formally, after dividing the integrand by , the inequality bounds it by , so dominated convergence justifies the result even at that edge.
At large radius, , and the contribution per logarithmic interval is . The outer disk dominates the low-frequency emission because its much greater area outweighs its lower effective temperature.
For intermediate frequencies use the allowed power-law approximation to the effective temperature and introduceThensoThe lower limit is much smaller than one and the upper limit much larger than one. Extending them to zero and infinity leaves a constant: near zero the integrand behaves as , and at infinity it decays exponentially. Hence the intermediate spectrum isThis is the one-third spectrum of a multitemperature disk. Much of the emission comes from radii where is of order , moving inward as the frequency rises. With the exact inner-edge profile, a broad intermediate interval also requires frequency well below ; the supplied approximation captures its slope away from the hottest annuli.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 ib Paper 3 6D a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The spatial wavefunction is the position amplitude of a stationary quantum state, so is its probability density after normalization. The real function is the potential energy, is the energy eigenvalue, is the particle mass, and is the reduced Planck constant.