## Physics Friday 107

The usage of four-vectors (vectors in Minkowski space) can simplify a number of problems where special relativity must be considered. For an example, we will consider the phenomenon of Compton scattering. Note, for the rest of this I will use the (+,-,-,-) signature; namely that the scalar product of four vectors is .

The energy-momentum 4-vector, also known as the 4-momentum, or sometimes by the (IMO atrocious) portmanteau “momenergy”), is the four-vector extension of momentum, the time component corresponding to energy. Specifically, I will use the convention
 (as seen here). In this form, we see
;
thus the (invariant) length of the four-vector is simply the rest energy of the object.

Now, in Compton scattering, a photon of wavelenth λ collides with an electron at rest in our laboratory frame, and is scattered by an angle θ from its original direction, with new wavelength λ’. We desire to derive a formula for λ’ in terms of λ and θ.
The key is to apply the conservation of energy and momentum, which the use of 4-vectors makes simple: the combined energy-momentum 4-vector must be the same both before and after the collision. We choose our spatial coordinates so that the photon is initially moving in the x direction, and scattering is in the xy plane, with θ in the usual direction in that plane.
As discussed here, the energy and momentum of a photon are given by , and , giving us an energy-momentum 4-vector for our photon pre-collision of .
And letting m be the rest mass of an electron, then our electron has pre-collision energy-momentum 4-vector .
After collision, we have new energy-momentum 4-vectors  and . From our energy and momentum relations for photons, along with the scattering angle θ, we have post-collision that .

Now, our conservation of energy and momentum is
.
Solving for the post-collision 4-momentum of the electron, we have
.
Taking the norm square of both sides, we see
.
But since the norm squared of a four-vector is its scalar product with itself, and the scalar product is a bilinear form, the right hand side of the above is
, and so
. But we recall that the length of an energy-momentum 4-vector is the rest energy; thus , as photons have no rest mass, and
. Thus we need only find the scalar products , , and . As for the first two, since all the spatial components of  are zero,  and . For the last scalar product,
.
Plugging in these, we see
.
Multiplying both sides by λλ’, we get
,
and then dividing both sides by 2hmc3 gives
,
where the quantity  is the Compton wavelength of the electron.

Note that our use of the 4-momentum meant not only could we combine energy and momentum conservation into a single equation, by taking the norm square as we did, we eliminated the need to consider the individual components of the post-collision 4-momentum of the electron.

### One Response to “Physics Friday 107”

1. Physics Friday 108 « Twisted One 151's Weblog Says:

[…] Friday 108 By twistedone151 Last week, I illustrated an example of momentum and energy conservation under special relativity, with the […]