So I've been looking into particle-antiparticle pair production from a gamma ray and don't understand one thing.
Let's say I have a 1,1 MeV photon and it hits a nucleus - electron-positron pair with some momentum will be created and the nucleus will probably get some momentum as well because of the impact.
But why does the photon need the nucleus at all? Why can't it just fly through space and suddenly, with some probability, change into a electron-positron pair with momentum? I see that the momentum of the system wouldn't be conserved but I don't really understand how the nucleus helps it.