Annihilation

In physics, the word is used to denote the process that occurs when a subatomic particle collides with its respective antiparticle. Since energy and momentum must be conserved, the particles are not actually made into nothing, but rather into new particles. Antiparticles have exactly opposite additive quantum numbers from particles, so the sums of all quantum numbers of the original pair are zero. Hence, any set of particles may be produced whose total quantum numbers are also zero as long as conservation of energy and conservation of momentum are obeyed.

During a low-energy annihilation, photon production is favored, since these particles have no mass. However, high-energy particle colliders produce annihilations where a wide variety of exotic heavy particles are created.

Examples of annihilation

Electron-positron annihilation

:  +  →  When a low-energy electron annihilates a low-energy positron (antielectron), they can only produce two or more gamma ray photons, since the electron and positron do not carry enough mass-energy to produce heavier particles and conservation of energy and linear momentum forbid the creation of only one photon. These are sent out in opposite directions to conserve momentum. However, if one or both particles carry a larger amount of kinetic energy, various other particle pairs can be produced. The annihilation (or decay) of an electron-positron pair into a single photon, cannot occur in free space because momentum would not be conserved in this process. The reverse reaction is also impossible for this reason, except in the presence of another particle that can carry away the excess momentum. However, in quantum field theory this process is allowed as an intermediate quantum state. Some authors justify this by saying that the photon exists for a time which is short enough that the violation of conservation of momentum can be accommodated by the uncertainty principle. Others choose to assign the intermediate photon a non-zero mass. (The mathematics of the theory are unaffected by which view is taken.) This opens the way for virtual pair production or annihilation in which a one-particle quantum state may fluctuate into a two-particle state and back again (coherent superposition). These processes are important in the vacuum state and renormalization of a quantum field theory. It also allows neutral particle mixing through processes such as the one pictured here.

References

Notations

Footnotes

See also

Category:Particle physics Category:Destruction Category:Antimatter