Besides continuing some workouts in matching up wave solutions involved in elementary approaches to Hawking radiation, I also spent half of the day reviewing my notes that contain some basic workouts in scalar-to-scalar scattering and particularly, my workouts in which I have set up a scattering of one scalar particle into supposedly two scalar particles.
In quantum field theory set up, this is given starting with raising a one-particle state of spatial momentum from the vacuum state through a raising or creation operator. Note that since we are dealing with scalar fields, our raising and annihilation operators are those for bosonic fields such as scalar fields (bosons of spin zero).
We may then think of this state as the initial state and then evolve this state into another one particle state with the application of a unitary operator, the time evolution operator. What comes next is the projection of this evolved one particle state on a two-particle state of different spatial momenta. That is, forming a scattering matrix in which an initial one particle state of some initial spatial momentum scatters into a two-particle state with two final spatial momenta.
The result in calculating such scattering process is dependent on the presence of sources – setting these sources to zero would result into a null (zero) scattering matrix. For the scattering matrix to be non-zero, the sources are necessary since they provide the needed extra spatial momenta that must be carried away from these sources to the vertex where all spatial momenta are summed up.
Supposedly in the set up one scalar particle scatters into two scalar particles but at the scattering vertex four spatial momenta are to be summed up instead of just three. The fourth spatial momentum needed at the vertex is provided by a source at some space-time point and this momentum is carried by an additional scalar propagator.
The said scattering matrix can be expanded into large (infinite) number of terms as contained in the Euler (Taylor/Maclaurin) expansion and first of such terms depicts what has been mentioned above. This is shown in the picture.
In the picture, there are two Green’s functions ( and ) that act as scalar propagators each originates from an initial space-time point different from the other but the two propagators converge at a single final space point. One propagator carries the spatial momentum from the initial spatial point say, to the converging spatial point . The other propagator carries the spatial momentum from the other initial spatial point to the . It is to be noticed that what this other propagator carries is a momentum given off by a source at the space-time point y. So rendering this source to zero would kill off this needed additional momentum thus, resulting in a null scattering matrix for a scalar particle to scatter into two scalar particles. (Note that the other proceeding terms also depend on the presence of these sources.)
In the picture it is to be noticed that at the single final spatial point where two propagators converge, we are to integrate over this point or region and this implies a Dirac-delta function at this point or region where we are to sum up the said four spatial momenta.