# Tag Info

## Hot answers tagged pair-production

16

Another way of solving such problems is to go to another reference frame, where you obviously don't have enough energy. For example you've got a $5 MeV$ photon, so you think that there is plenty of energy to make $e^-e^+$ pair. Now you make a boost along the direction of the photon momentum with $v=0.99\,c$ and you get a $0.35 MeV$ photon. That is not ...

8

In the beginning, let's investigate the pair production. We know from relativity that mass can be equivalent to energy and if we set the most important physical constants to one $\hbar = c = \varepsilon = 1$, then we have the following relation (assuming that we produce electron-positron pair): $$E = \omega = \gamma_1 m_{e^-} + \gamma_2 m_{e^+}$$ Where ...

6

Basics You need to be able to generate a pair-creation event and be able to image it well enough to know what it was. Getting a pair conversion event Pair creation calls for the highest energy gamma you can get and as much mass in the chamber as you can arrange. The odds of getting a pair-conversion event are graphed in figure 31.17 of the 2013 ...

6

Other way to see why this is impossible is to look at inverse process: why annihilating positron and electron can't give up only one photon? Imagine these two particles at rest near each other (or look at center-of-mass system). They will annihilate giving 1MeV of energy, but single photon can't pick this energy up by itself because it would also have E/c of ...

5

Pair production of electron/positron happens in the electric field of the atoms to satisfy conservation laws and the same will be true for off mass shell Z0 going into a neutrino antineutrino pair, interacting with the weak field of the atoms. The equivalent to the photon weak interaction mediator is the Z0 and neutrino antineutrino pairs can be formed ...

5

The answer by @gns-ank covers the kinematics of why. Below I tackle the Why does a photon "split" into an electron and positron, and not just bounce off the nucleus in your comment to his answer. In general physics can answer "why" in a nested way, like russian dolls. In the end, the kernel answer is "because it does". In this case though we are in ...

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This process is the result of the cooperation of two theories of nature: (i) Special relativity: This is a huge topic to study but we shall only need a small part of it, and perhaps the most famous one, which tells us this $E=mc^2$. This equation shows us that matter and energy are equivalent and interchangeable. For example, if an amount of energy $E = ... 4 The general diffeomorphism symmetry in the target space is not a symmetry of the world line theory or, analogously, the world sheet theory! A general spacetime diffeomorphism changes the metric tensor$g_{\mu\nu}(X^\alpha)$which plays the role of the "coupling constants" (coefficients defining the action, e.g. your exponent) in the world line or world sheet ... 4 There's a simple argument that massive bodies that are not black holes cannot emit Hawking radiation. Consider a single proton in its ground state. It does not emit radiation because if it were, it would have to decay to some lower-energy state. This eventually may happen when the proton decays, but the radiation is not black-body radiation, so it can't be ... 4 look at energy-momentum conservation: $$p_\gamma = p_1+p_2$$ the photon has invariant mass 0 wheras the electron and positron have mass$m_e$$$p_\gamma^2 = (p_1+p_2)^2 = p_1^2+p_2^2+2p_1\cdot p_2$$ $$0 = 2m_e^2 + 2p_1\cdot p_2$$ $$-m_e^2= p_1\cdot p_2 = E_1E_2-|\vec{p_1}||\vec{p_2}|cos\theta > E_1E_2-|\vec{p_1}||\vec{p_2}| = E_1E_2(1-\beta_1\beta_2) ... 4 Check if momentum can be conserved. That ought to do the trick. 3 Question 3: One time and two space dimensions for simplicity (t, x, y). Photon travelling in +x direction. Photon four momentum is (\frac{E}{c}, p_x, 0). It's null so$$ \frac{E^2}{c^2}-p_x^2=0$$So$$p_x = \frac{E}{c} $$E=h\nu, so photon four momentum is (\frac{h\nu}{c}, \frac{h\nu}{c}, 0) To keep it simple, assume the electron/positron are ... 3 The reply by Emilio Pisanty to your other question also pertains here. But to prove the impossibility of pair production of a photon in vacuum it is not necessary to go into the mathematics of the Lorenz transformations further than you have already done. When one uses valid algebra and from two paths reaches a different answer one has already proven that ... 3 Pair production is not the same as decay of a particle. A particle can decay into two components according to its decay probability without needing an extra interaction. A lamda in its rest frame will decay into a proton and a pion, for example, within a predictable decay time . There is no rest frame for the photon since its mass is 0 and it is always ... 3 My previous answer is beside the point now that the question has been edited. There is a simpler example of a question of this type which has been analyzed in great detail in the literature, and that involves an electric charge which is stationary in a gravitational field. Since the power radiated is nonzero if a charge is accelerated one might, by the ... 3 The pair production is only possible due to relativistic quantum physics and one needs to describe all these processes by the so-called "quantum field theory" or its generalization (well, string theory is the only example). In quantum field theory, electromagnetic fields are, just like all other fields, quantized. All of the configurations of the ... 3 It is all hidden in the QED Lagrangian: One can answer this question in a simple way in terms of the QED Lagrangian, at the electron-field interaction part: L=\bar\psi(\partial_\mu\gamma^\mu-m_e+eA_\mu\gamma^\mu)\psi This tells us that interactions of the form: e^++e^-\rightarrow\gamma..................(1) \gamma\rightarrow ... 3 You can't simultaneously conserve energy and linear momentum. Let the photon have energy E_{\gamma} = p_{\gamma} c and the electron have energy E_{-}^{2} = p_{e}^{2}c^2 + m_{e}^{2}c^4 and an analogous expression for the positron. Suppose the electron and positron depart from the interaction site with an angle 2\theta between them. Conservation of ... 3 There is no tree level vertex for a neutrino scattering off of a photon, so you have two choices: Weak Drell-Yan if the progenitors are leptons. That is$$l + \bar{l} \to Z^0 \to \nu + \bar{\nu} \,.$$A multi-step process involving a weak radiative correction. Say running a W^\pm across the out-going lepton lines in a normal Drell-Yan diagram. Unlike the ... 2 Gamma decay is the emission of photons. You are thinking of \beta decay. When the particle is decaying, if it emits a W^{-}boson, it will subsequently decay and create an electron (e^-), and an electron antineutrino (\overline{v}_e), the antimatter particle to an electron neutrino. It will also flip a neutron into a proton. This is known as ... 2 The main condition is that the sum of the energies of the photons would be higher than two times the mass of the element whose pair your are trying to create, this can be seen by energy conservation:$$ E_{\gamma_1} + E_{\gamma_2} = K_1 + K_2 + 2 m c^2$$Where$E$is the energy of each photon before collision,$K$is the kinetik energy of each particle ... 2 Let us say that the photon has created pair of massive particles. There must exist a reference frame ("center of mass") in which the total momentum of the two particles is zero. So by momentum conservation, in the same frame the photon had to have momentum zero. But photon cannot have momentum zero, because then it would have zero energy. So momentum is not ... 2 Presumably what you want to do is think in the center-of-momentum frame. In this frame, there is no net momentum, just energy. So presumably you want to convert to a system of particles at rest, two of which are protons and the rest of which are unspecified. How much energy is left over to go into the unspecified other stuff? Although I think it's most ... 2 It depends what you mean by "electrostatic energy". When we are talking of pair production we are talking of physics at the quantum mechanics framework. FEYNMAN DIAGRAMS for pair production by a gamma ray (left) or an electron (right). These represent the processes in the preceding sketch. Lets take the simplest diagram on the left: a photon ... 2 These electron-positron pairs are created by gamma rays. I don't know anything about how to make a cloud chamber, but detecting cosmic gamma rays at the surface of the Earth is very very rare. The atmosphere is very opaque to gamma rays (Source). Cosmic gamma rays burst are commonly detected on satellites orbiting the Earth, but very few make it to the ... 2 Assuming that$\tau^-\tau^+$can form a bound state similarly to positronium($e^-e^+$), all we need is the form of the ground state of positronium, specifically that it is proportional to the reduced mass of the pair:$\mu = \frac{m_1m_2}{m_1+m_2}$. Knowing that positronium's ground state is$(-13.6/2)= -6.8$eV and that the new reduced mass for the Tau ... 2 You have a photon that comes in and splits into$e^-e^+\$. One of the electrons escapes, the other has a short segment, where it sheds another photon. The second electron now escapes and the photon is absorbed by the nucleus. The center electron segment and the second photon can be off the mass shell.

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It's important to note that electron-positron production is well-established for photons or charged particles above the threshold of ~1 MeV total energy. For high-energy charged particles which lose energy by generating "showers" of less-energetic particles, it's the usually the primary energy loss mechanism. Your link is suggesting a photon-photon collider ...

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