Why Two Gamma Rays is Produced during Annihilation?

 1γ1e+1e+ ( pair production)

Then why

 (annihilation of matter)


Instead of





The process cannot satisfy both momentum and energy conservation at the same time. To see this, consider a reference frame in which the system's total momentum is zero (that is, the electron has the opposite momentum to the positron). A basic Lorentz transformation can always be used to choose this reference frame.


Now, the photon produced must have zero total momentum. However, since photons must still travel at the speed of light, this is impossible. More importantly, if the emitted photon has the frequency ω, then the momentum must  satisfy . Since ω is the energy of the photon, ω2me   by energy conservation, and so |k|>0.


The mechanism is completely acceptable since the center-of-mass frame can still be perfectly fulfilled even though the outgoing photons have opposite momenta.


I hope this helped you to be more understand!



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