Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: superposition



Ludwik Kowalsi asked:

By analogy with the "water in a river" example, a naive expectation would
be "non-superposition due to too high density of photons" rather than
"due to too high energy of individual photons". How should the wording
"high energy gamma rays" be interpreted below?

This application of the water analogy is misleading. The phrase "high energy
gamma rays" should be interpreted as the energy of each photon. The reason
for the high energy of the individual photons is that when their energy is
significantly less than the mass of an electron/positron pair the efficacy of
their coupling to the e-/e+ Dirac field much more attenuated due to large
mass denominators in the appropriate propagators which mediate the
interaction.

David Bowman
dbowman@gtc.georgetown.ky.us