Fı́sica Nuclear

Tarea 5
Instructions. Solve each problem carefully and explain your procedure.

1. Electron radius
Suppose one wants to obtain an upper bound for the electron’s radius by looking for a deviation from the
Mott cross-section in electron-electron scattering. What centre of mass energy would be necessary to set
an upper limit on the radius of 10−3 f m?
2. Electron-pion scattering
State the differential cross-section, dσ/dω, for elastic electron-pion scattering. Write out
explicitly
 the Q2
dependence of the form factor part of the cross-section in the limit Q2 → 0 assuming that r2 π = 0.44f m2 .

3. Spinor’s normalization
Find the normalisation constant N (dependent of the energy E) such that the free particle positive energy
Dirac solutions
 
φ
ψ=N σ ·~
~ p e−ip·x (1)
E+m φ
p
where E = p~2 + m2 , and using natural units (~ = c = 1), are normalised to ψ † ψ = E/m. Why should
one ψ † ψ to behave under Lorentz transformations as an energy?
Show that for the negative energy solution it is also possible to choose the normalisation so that ψ † ψ is
positive.
4. Gamma matrices
Show that

γ 0 (γ µ (1 − γ 5 )) † γ 0 = (1 + γ 5 )γ µ (2)

5. Angular momentum’s identity

Verify the following identity
 
1 ∂
σ · p̂ = (σ · r) −i~r + iσ · L̂ (3)
r2 ∂r

where σ is the vector of Pauli matrices and L̂ is the angular momentum operator.
6. Compton scattering
At the HERA collider ring the spins of the electrons going around the ring align themselves over time
antiparallel to the magnetic guide fields (Sokolov-Ternov effect [So64]). This spin polarisation may be
measured with the help of the spin dependence of Compton scattering. We solely consider the kinematics
below.
a) Circularly polarised photons from an argon laser (514nm) hit the electrons (26.67GeV , straight flight
path) head on. What energy does the incoming photon have in the rest frame of the electron?
b) Consider photon scattering through 90circ and 180circ in the electron rest frame. What energy does
the scattered photon possess in each case? How large are the energies and scattering angles in the lab
frame?
c) How good does the spatial resolution of a calorimeter have to be if it is 64m away from the interaction
vertex and should spatially distinguish between these photons?

1
7. A resonance of significance for experiments on ultra-high-energy neutrinos in astrophysics is the Glashow
resonance:

v¯e + e− → W − (4)

where MW c2 = 81GeV . Assuming that the target electrons in the cosmos are at rest, show that this
resonance would be excited for antineutrino energies of around 6400T eV , and that the peak cross-section
would be about 5µb.
8. The ∆ pion-nucleon resonance (see Figure 1) has a central mass of 1232M eV /c2 and spin J = 3/2. It
decays predominantly into a pion of J = 0 plus a nucleon of J = 1/2, but also decays in the mode
∆ → n + γ with a branching ratio of 0.55%. Using Equation

4πλ̄2 (2J + 1)(Γ2 /4)

σ(E) = (5)
(2sa + 1)(2sb + 1)[(E − ER )2 + (Γ2 /4)]

where sa y sb are the spins of the incident particles, J is the spin of the resonant state (all in units of
~) and λ̄ = ~/p. Calculate the peak cross-section for the process γ + p → ∆+ . The cosmic microwave
background consists of photons with a temperature of T = 2.73K and density of 400cm−3 . Estimate
the energy that primary cosmic ray protons would require in order to excite the peak of the ∆ resonance,
in collisions with the microwave background. Assume a photon energy of 2.7kT and head-on collisions.
What is the mean free path for collision of such protons?

Figure 1: The pion-proton resonance ∆ (1232) first observed by Anderson et al. in 1952.