The solution before revision #18598 of , by jzmicer. This is not the current version.

Statement

14.5.22. What is the maximum energy that photons with energy can acquire when scattered on a counter-propagating electron beam with energy ?

Solution

The problem can be solved simply by writing down the conservation of momentum and energy, but I want to show another method. One can notice that if we go to a reference frame where the electrons in the beam are at rest, we observe the Compton effect. The change in energy upon scattering of a photon in this case can be obtained from the well-known formula


where is the scattering angle of the photon. This formula is derived in problem .

As a result, we need to carefully transform to such a system, calculate the energy, and then transform back to the laboratory frame.

For convenience, we switch to a system of units where . This simplifies the notation, and it is convenient that the photon momentum equals its energy. We will denote energies in the laboratory frame (LF) by , and in the electron rest frame (RF) by .

Thus, the gamma factor for the electron in the LF is obviously
\gamma=(1-v^2)^{-\frac{1}{2}}=\frac{ \mathcal{E}_e }{m_e}, \ \to \ v=\sqrt{1-\left(\frac{m_e}{ \mathcal{E}_e }\right)^2}=\frac{\sqrt{\mathcal{E}_e^2-m_e^2}}{\mathcal{E}_e}

E=\mathcal{E}\gamma(1+v)
$$

Using the Compton formula, we obtain the energy change upon collision:

The maximum energy in the LF is achieved when the photon is scattered backward in the RF (), because upon inverse transformation to the LF, a photon scattered backward in the RF receives the maximum Doppler shift forward (in the direction of the electron's motion):

Inverse transformation (taking into account that the photon's direction has reversed):


Multiply numerator and denominator by :



Finally substitute the velocity:

Now return to standard units:


Don't forget the numerical value (Savchenko forgot...):
эВ
Note: Savchenko apparently has a small typo in the answer.

Answer

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