Radiation, Matter and Anti-matter

In the previous lecture we discussed photons and electrons, and how they could both be thought of
as both particles and waves. In this lecture we will look in more detail at their properties, and
discover something rather surprising.

Photons

Consider first the waves used to describe photons. For simplicity, we consider for the time being
waves in only one space dimension, x, which thus take the generic form
(x, t) sin 2(x/ t),
where (x, t) is the electromagnetic field, the wavelength of the waves and their frequency. The
waves are oscillations in both space and time.

Instead of sine waves, we may use cosine (or indeed some linear combination) this just shifts the
phase of the wave by a constant.

Photons cont.
Because E = h, p = h/, we can write instead

(x, t) sin

px Et
~


,

where we have defined ~ = h/2: this is a convenient notation to save having to keep writing 2.
Now these waves are solutions of the wave equation
!
2
1 2

(x, t) = 0.
x 2
c 2 t 2
This is because when we differentiate the sine we get cosine, and thus if we differentiate twice, we
get back sine (with a minus sign): so for our waves
 2
 2
p
2
E
2

x 2
~
t 2
~
and thus they satisfy the wave equation provided
2

p =

E2
c2

and thus if E = pc. So these waves correspond to relativistic massless particles photons, as we
discussed in the previous lecture.

Photons cont.

Note that if we shift x by a constant, x x + x0 , the wave equation remains unchanged, and thus
the wave too should remain unchanged, at least up to a phase. This symmetry implies that the
quantity p conjugate to x must remain fixed, and is thus conserved, i.e. momentum conservation,
just as in classical mechanics. Similarly time translation invariance, under t t + t0 , implies that
the energy E is conserved, since E is conjugate to t.
If we were now to write a similar wave equation for waves in two or three spatial dimensions, then we
would find that these equations also have a rotational invariance, + 0 , for some rotation
angle . This likewise implies a conservation law, in this case angular momentum L. The rotational
waves will have the generic form


L Et
sin
.
~
However for rotations there is a further constraint: if we rotate through 2, ie all the way around a
circle, we should get back to where we started. But if + 2


 
 
L
2L
L
L
sin
= sin
sin
+
~
~
~
~
provided L/~ is an integer:
L = n~, n = 0, 1, 2, ...
So in quantum mechanics, angular momentum always comes in lumps of size ~.

Photons cont.

We saw in the classical electromagnetism lecture that light waves can have two polarizations: the
waves rotate in either a left handed or right handed way, like a corkscrew. These rotations carry
angular momentum, and in the quantum theory this means that the photons themselves must have
an intrinsic angular momentum, called spin or helicity. In fact it turns out that this happens in a
very natural way: there are two spin states for photons: left handed photons L have spin +~,
and right handed photons R have spin ~. Thus when we have a lot of photons, some left and
some right handed, the total angular momentum is always an integer multiple of ~.

Electrons
We now consider a wave equation for electrons. Since electrons have a mass m, their energy and
momentum are related by
2
2 2
2 4
E =p c +m c ,
so

p
E = p 2 c 2 + m2 c 4 .

So we hav two distinct solutions, one with positive energy E mc 2 , the other with negative energy
E mc 2 . The negative energy solutions look very peculiar, in particular because they appear
unstable: as |p| increases, E becomes more and more negative. So we need to understand what the
negative energy solutions actually mean.

Electrons cont.

Just as for photons, we consider waves of the form



px Et
sin
.
~
If E E , but also t t, this wave is left unchanged. So negative energy solutions can be
thought of as particles travelling backwards in time!
If we want to find wave equations for these positive and negative energy waves, we will now need
two equations, one for each: specifically we might consider (in one dimension again for simplicity):



1
+ = 0,

x
c t



1
+
= 0,
x
c t
because then for sinusoidal oscillations of + , p = +E /c, while for oscillations of , p = E /c.
However this only works for particles with zero mass.

Electrons cont.
The way to include the mass was discovered by Dirac in 1928: we have to couple the two equations
together, thus




1
mc

+ =
,
x
c t
~





1
mc
+
=
+ .
x
c t
~

+ c1 t
in the second equation to either side of the first equation
If we then apply the operator x









1
mc

1
mc 2
+

+ =
+
=
+
x
c t
x
c t
~
x
c t
~

and thus
1 2
2
2
x 2
c t 2

!
=

m2 c 2
.
~2

This has the usual wave solutions with

2

1 2
2 2
E =m c
c2

just as required.
So for massive electrons, besides a positive energy particle solution, we also have a negative
energy anti-particle solution: if we have electrons, we must also have anti-electrons. In other
words, by following through the logical implications of relativity and quantum mechanics Dirac
predicted anti-matter!

Electrons cont.

The original argument used by Dirac was for waves in three spatial dimensions, and is thus a little
more complicated that the one dimensional argument above. However the basic result was the same,
with the further prediction that the electron also has two spins, with angular momentum ~/2
(left handed and right handed). There are thus actually four distinct wave solutions
L

+ , + , ,
corresponding to left handed and right handed electrons and anti-electrons.
The bound solutions (say around a circle) again take the form


L Et
L,R
,
sin
~
but now because the spin takes the values L = ~/2, the bound state solution is only unchanged if
+ 4, i.e. if we go around the circle twice! If instead we only go around once, + 2,
then , i.e. we pick up a minus sign.

Electrons cont.

This minus sign is very important. For photons, we saw in the last lecture that when there are two
interchangeable ways 1 and 2 for a process to occur (for example the photon can go through either
of two slits) we have to add the amplitudes to obtain the probability: P |A1 + A2 |2 . In fact this is
true for any particles with integer spin, n~, n = 0, 1, 2, .... Such particles are called bosons,
after the physicist Bose.
However for electrons, because interchanging 1 and 2 may be performed by rotation through 2, and
this rotation gives a minus sign, we instead have to subtract the amplitudes to obtain the
probability: P |A1 A2 |2 . This is true for all particles with half-integer spin, n~/2,
n = 1, 3, .... Such particles are called fermions, after the physicist Fermi. In fact it is possible to
show using relativity that all particles must have either integer or half-integer spin in three spatial
dimensions, so all particles must be either bosons or fermions.
This distinction is yet another reason why photons and electrons look very different. While bosons
like to be in the same state where they can reinforce each other to give macroscopic effects (like the
coherent photons from a laser), two fermions cannot be in the same state: if A1 = A2 , P = 0. This
is called the Pauli exclusion principle, and lies behind the distinctive chemical properties of elements
in different groups of the periodic table.

Interactions

Free photons and electrons are not so interesting in themselves: we only get physics because they
interact with each other. The interaction is actually very simple: it occurs at a single point in space
and time, and its strength is given by one number, called the electric charge, e (this minus sign is
simply a historical convention). Thus an electron can emit a photon: in pictures with time running
horizontally

This diagram represents the amplitude for the process: the probablity that the electron emits a
photon is thus proportional to e 2 . Similarly, an electron can absorb a photon:

Interactions cont.
Energy and momentum are conserved at each interaction vertex, ensuring that they are conserved in
any process involving interacting photons and electrons. The charge is also conserved (since the
photon carries no electric charge). Moreover the charges of left handed and right handed electrons
are equal, and as the photon has spin ~, emission or absorption of a photon changes a left handed
electron into a right handed one or vice versa. This means that processes involving photons and
electrons are invariant under parity: if we exchange all left handed particles with right handed ones,
the probabilities are unchanged. In fact if the left handed and right handed electrons coupled to
photons differently the Dirac equation would no longer work, except in the special case of m = 0.
Later in the course, we will see that this creates an interesting dilemma.
The emission and absorption of photons allows electrons to interact with each other:

It can be shown that this produces the usual Coulomb interaction of electromagnetism, with
potential e 2 /4r at large distances. The interaction can reach across large distances because the
photon is massless: when massive particles are exchanged, the interaction is limited to distances of
order ~c/m, essentially because of the uncertainty principle.

Interactions cont.
Compton scattering, on the other hand, happens when an electron successively absorbs or emits a
photon. There are two ways in which this can happen, and to obtain the probability we have to add
their amplitudes:

Note that the second diagram can also be written like this:

The electron line between the two interactions is now going backwards in time it is thus an
anti-electron! So in this process the photon first splits into an electron and anti-electron, and the
anti-electron then combines with the incoming electron to give the outgoing photon. Because charge
is conserved at each interaction, and the photon has zero charge, this means that the anti-electron
must have charge +e. For this reason it is called the positron.

Interactions cont.

So electrons and positrons are particles with the same mass m, but with opposite charge e.
Positrons were first seen in cosmic ray showers by Anderson in 1932: in a magnetic field a charged
particle moves in a spiral, the direction of which depends on its charge, and Anderson observed
particles which were like electrons in every way, except that they spiralled in the opposite direction.

Creation

In todays lecture we have introduced some new and radical concepts. Firstly, the concept of
anti-matter particles of the same mass, but opposite charge. Dirac received the Nobel prize in
1933 for predicting positrons: Anderson in 1936 for finding them. Secondly, we found that matter
and anti-matter annihilate each other, producing radiation (photons) and conversely that radiation
can create matter and anti-matter.

These fundamental annihilation and creation processes lie at the heart of our understanding of
physics at an elementary level. At a particle collider, we take matter and anti-matter, and collide
them not so much to break them apart, but rather to create radiation, which can then be used to
create new forms of matter and anti-matter. The higher the energy of the collision, the more
massive the particles that can be created. The great achievement at CERN in July 2012 was to
collide protons with sufficient energy that they could create a Higgs boson: before the Higgs could
be discovered, it first had to be created.