PHY422 N UCLEAR AND PARTICLE P HYSICS

Problem Set
(1) A particle of rest energy mc2 is moving with speed v in the positive x direction. The particle
decays into two particles, each of rest energy 140 MeV. One particle, with kinetic energy
282 MeV, moves in positive x direction. The other particle, with kinetic energy 25 MeV,
moves in the negative x direction. Find the rest energy of the original particle and its speed.
(2) Say we start with two states with j1 = 1 and j2 = 1. Using the Clebsch-Gordon coefficient
tables, write down the decomposition of all possible states when we add these states. (For
example |1, 1i|1, 1i = |2, 2i where the coefficient is 1). Now using columns instead of rows,
write down how the final state |2, 0i will compose.
(3) Determne the isospin assignments |I, I3 i for the following particles: Ω− , Σ+ , Ξ0 , ρ+ , η, K̄ 0 .
(4) Draw a few possible Feynman diagrams to show how at an proton-antiproton collider, we can
arrive at a final state that has at least two tau-leptons. There can be other particles in the final
state as well (I don’t care about those).
(In other words, I’m asking you to draw possible diagrams for this process pp̄ → τ τ + X,
where X can be one/more particles and the two τ ’s need not be of opposite charge. Note that
the actual diagrams will start with either a quark/antiquark pair interacting, or a pair of gluons,
or a quark/gluon pair or antiquark/gluon pair.)

This is precisely the exercise one would go through to figure out what the standard model back-
grounds would be for a ditau search such as (a) Phys. Rev. D 77, 091105 [arXiv:0706.2832],
or (b) Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 201802 [arXiv:1302.4491].