When two massive particles coalesce without additional outgoing radiation, four-momentum conservation makes the final four-momentum their sum. For collinear incident velocities, its rest mass is the positive square root of the displayed invariant, and its final velocity equals the center-of-momentum frame velocity . Relative kinetic energy can become internal rest energy, so the final rest mass is generally larger than the sum of the incident rest masses.
A particle of total incident energy and rest energy strikes an identical stationary particle. If the two outgoing paths make equal and opposite nonzero angles to the incoming direction in the laboratory frame, transverse conservation of momentum makes their outgoing energies equal to . Longitudinal conservation of momentum and the mass shell relation imply . The nonrelativistic limit is ; at large incident energy both paths become forward directed.