Physicist tamed basic myon particles to a precisely controlled beam

Physicist tamed basic myon particles to a precisely controlled beam

A team at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Tokai focused a laser on a stream of myons in order to bring the fast moving particles to a standstill. The researchers then applied an electric field to accelerate these "cooled" myons to about 4 % of the speed of light. The results that have not yet been examined by experts were published on October 15th on the Preprint server Arxiv 1 .

This performance is a "big step forward" in the approach that is necessary to Myonkollider . Such a collider could be used to carry out the extremely sensitive measurements that are necessary to uncover new physical phenomena. It would be smaller and potentially cheaper to build than other particle colliders, says Tova Holmes, particle physicist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

myons are short-lived elementary particles that are almost identical to electrons, but have more than 200 times their masses. In the past ten years, the movement in the direction of a compact myon collider has strengthened that could keep up with the energies or even surpass them, which are achieved by huge proton and electron colleks, such as the 27-kilometer Hadron Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Laboratory for Partchen Physics at Geneva. A 10 km long myon collider could produce particles that have as much energy as those from a 90 -kilometer proton machine, since Myonen are elementary particles, the entire energy of which goes into any collision. In contrast, proton collisions between the components.

However, the acceleration of myons is extremely difficult because they only exist about 2 microseconds before they are in an electron and two types of Neutrinos . They also move in different directions at different speeds, which makes it difficult to tame them into a narrow, highly intensive jet. Although researchers have accelerated myons before, the rays are "very divergent", says the co -author of the study, Shusei Kamioka, particle physicist at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan. As a result, the rays are too unpredictable to be used for sensitive measurements.

To overcome this hurdle, Kamioka and his colleagues shot a beam of positively charged myons, the antimaterie counterpart of the Myons, called antifungal, in silica-aerogel-a spongy material that is often used as thermal insulation. When the positive muons collided with electrons in the aerogel, neutral atoms of "Muonium" formed. The researchers fired a laser on these atoms to separate their electrons, making them back into positive myons that were almost frozen. This cooling process ensured that the speeds and directions of the particles became more even.

Then the researchers used an electric field to accelerate these slowed myons to an energy of 100 kilo -electron voltage, which achieved a speed of about 4 % of the speed of light.

Although the results are promising, there is still a long way for myon collides to become a reality, says Holmes. The approach would have to be scaled in order to generate even closer, more intensive rays.

Kamioka explained that he and his colleagues develop the technology that is necessary to accelerate myons to 94 % of the speed of light, and hope to achieve this by 2028. "This is our next milestone," he says.

In addition to the construction of a future Collider, physicists could use high -energy myon rays in experiments that go beyond the standard model of particle physics, such as precise measurements of the mysterious magnetism of the myons - which is stronger than theoretically predicted, according to Kamioka.

1. Aritome, S. et al. Preprint under https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2410.11367 (2024).

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