10 questions linked to/from Decay of massless particles
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### Why can't a single photon produce an electron-positron pair?

In reading through old course material, I found the assignment (my translation): Show that a single photon cannot produce an electron-positron pair, but needs additional matter or light quanta. My ...
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### Why don't photons split up into multiple lower energy versions of themselves?

A photon could spontaneously split up into two or more versions of itself and all the conservation laws I'm aware of would not be violated by this process. (I think.) I've given this some thought, and ...
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### How does classical GR concept of space-time emerge from string theory?

First, I'll state some background that lead me to the question. I was thinking about quantization of space-time on and off for a long time but I never really looked into it any deeper (mainly because ...
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### Spontaneous pair production?

So I've been looking into particle-antiparticle pair production from a gamma ray and don't understand one thing. Let's say I have a 1,1 MeV photon and it hits a nucleus - electron-positron pair with ...
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### In QED, why is the $e^- + e^+\leftrightarrow\gamma$ process forbidden on-shell?

QED has a vertex that couples a single photon to two fermions. This vertex describes the annihilation of an electron-positron pair into a photon. Why is this process forbidden for all three particles ...
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### Can a free particle ever emit a particle?

I have found this question here Can a free particle absorb/emit photons?, along with other resources that show a free particle cannot emit a photon (in a vacuum). Now, I am 90% sure it does, but ...
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### Photon “stuck” on the event horizon of a black hole

According to what I've read on special relativity, $c$ is the speed limit for every object in the universe, and according to Einstein, an object's speed through the three spatial dimensions plus its ...
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### QED: basic process which violates energy-momentum conservation

Why is the following process not possible? My book says it's because it violate energy and momentum conservation. Can someone explain me explicitly why? Why couldn't an energetic electron not ...
Suppose the QED with massless electron and assume the process $$\gamma \to e\bar{e},$$ driven by the triangle loop. Is this process possible; precisely, is the quantity  \Gamma \simeq (2\pi)^{4}\...