Physics 610, Problem Set 6

due: Wednesday, November 2, at 3:30pm

Please place your completed problem sets in the Physics 610 box in the physics department
mailroom (Rutherford 103b) before the due date. Please do not leave them in my mailbox. You
are encouraged to discuss these problems with your colleagues, but you must write up your own
solutions; the solutions you hand in should reflect your own work and understanding. Late problem
sets will be penalized 10% per day late, unless an extension has been obtained from me or the TA
before the due date.
1. Particle decay
Consider two interacting, spinless particles with Lagrangian:
L = 21 ( )2 12 m2 2 m2 + Lint ,

Lint = g .

This is similar to the theory we considered in class, except that now is a complex field.
(a) Rederive the Feynman rules in this theory (for example, by going back to the functional
integral and Wicks theorem). Indicate the particle species (, or ) at both ends of
each propagator and on each prong of the vertices.
Why did I not include a factor 1/2 in front of the complex kinetic term? how would
that have changed its propagator?
(b) Assuming that the particle is heavy enough to decay to two s, compute its decay
rate in its rest frame, , to lowest order in the coupling g. How does it differ from the
case of a real ?
2. Electron-positron pair annihilation
Consider the process of annihilation to two photons in scalar QED: . This is a
close analog of electron-proton annihilation in real QED, except that we neglect the spin of
the electron. The Lagrangian of the theory is
L = 14 F F D D m2 ,
where D = ( + ieA ) and D = ( ieA ) are the covariant derivatives, and e is
the electric charge of the scalar particle. For this problem, you may either use the Feynman
rules derived in class or work them out from scratch.
(a) Obtain the matrix element iM for this process by summing three Feynman diagrams.
Label the incoming and outgoing momenta as p1 , p2 and k1 , k2 , respectively, but keep the
photon polarization vectors 1 , 2 unspecified at this stage.
(b) Physical polarization vectors are transverse, ki i = 0, and physically unchanged under
a gauge transformation: ei + ai ki ' ei . This can be used to check your calculation.
1

Verify that your result from (a) indeed vanishes when substituting 1 k1 . You may
need to use any of the following: momentum conservation, the on-shell conditions, and
transverseness of 2 .
If your formula does not pass this test, go back to (a) and fix some relative signs!
(c) By plugging in explicit polarization vectors, obtain the four polarized matrix elements:
M++ ,

M+ ,

M+ ,

M ,

where the subscripts denote the helicity of photons 1 and 2. You may consider only the

high-energy limit, s  m, and express the result as a function of the scattering angle.
A good way to do this is to go to a center-of-mass frame where photon 1 moves in the
positive z direction. Then the polarization vectors are: (why the relative sign?)
1

(
1 ) = (0, 1, i, 0),
2

(
2 ) = (0, 1, i, 0).
2

(d) Assuming the photon helicities are not measured, sum over helicity states to obtained the
Deduce the differential and total cross-sections
unpolarized matrix element squared |M|.

d/ and for the process (again only for s  m).

If the photon helicities were measured, how would they be correlated?

(e) Repeat (c) and (d) in the opposite limit: s 2m, where the incoming scalars are
nearly at rest. Can you explain the correlations between photon helicities in that case
using a conservation law?
(f) In positron emission tomography (PET), a radionucleide gets attached to some tissue
of interest and decays by positron emission. Use dimensional analysis and the general
form of the cross-sections in (d), (e) to estimate how far the positron typically travels
inside the tissue, before annihilating to two photons. Take the positrons kinetic energy
0.5MeV and treat the tissues as mostly water.
(g) (Optional) The same Feynman diagrams, with simply different external momenta, describe the process of Compton scattering: . Use this observation to obtain,
without computing any new matrix element, the unpolarized total and differential crosssections for Compton scattering in scalar QED, again in the massless limit. How are the
initial and final helicity related to each other?