Powerful new particle accelerator a step closer with muon-marshaling technology
New experimental results show particles called muons can be corralled into beams suitable for high-energy collisions, paving the way for new physics.
New experimental results show particles called muons can be corralled into beams suitable for high-energy collisions, paving the way for new physics.
General Physics
Jul 17, 2024
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A team including researchers from the Laboratory for High Energy Physics at the University of Bern has successfully measured the interaction rates of neutrinos at unprecedented energies using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ...
General Physics
Jul 16, 2024
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Cosmic rays could offer scientists another way to track and study violent tornadoes and other severe weather phenomena, a new study suggests.
Earth Sciences
Jul 11, 2024
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An experiment by a group of physicists led by University of Rochester physics professor Regina Demina has produced a significant result related to quantum entanglement—an effect that Albert Einstein called "spooky action ...
Quantum Physics
Jun 14, 2024
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The NA64 experiment started operations at CERN's SPS North Area in 2016. Its aim is to search for unknown particles from a hypothetical "dark sector." For these searches, NA64 directs an electron beam onto a fixed target. ...
General Physics
May 20, 2024
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For over a decade, the CMS Collaboration, a large team of researchers based at different institutes worldwide, has been analyzing data collected at the Compact Muon Solenoid, a general-purpose particle detector at CERN's ...
Researchers at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica have found seven signals that could potentially indicate tau neutrinos—which are famously hard to detect—from astrophysical objects.
Operating at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) since 2022, the FASER experiment is designed to search for extremely weakly interacting particles. Such particles are predicted by many theories beyond the Standard Model that ...
General Physics
Apr 8, 2024
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In a talk at the ongoing Rencontres de Moriond conference, the ATLAS collaboration presented the result of its latest test of a key principle of the Standard Model of particle physics known as lepton flavor universality. ...
General Physics
Mar 26, 2024
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Muon spectroscopy is an important experimental technique that scientists use to study the magnetic properties of materials. It is based on "implanting" a spin-polarized muon in the crystal and measuring how its behavior is ...
General Physics
Jan 26, 2024
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The muon (pronounced /ˈmjuːɒn/; from the Greek letter mu (μ) used to represent it) is an elementary particle similar to the electron, with a unitary negative electric charge and a spin of ½. Together with the electron, the tau, and the three neutrinos, it is classified as a lepton. As is the case with other leptons, the muon is not believed to have any sub-structure at all (i.e., is not thought to be composed of any simpler particles).
The muon is an unstable subatomic particle with a mean lifetime of 2.2 µs. This comparatively long decay life time (the second longest known) is due to being mediated by the weak interaction. The only longer lifetime for an unstable subatomic particle is that for the free neutron, a baryon particle composed of quarks, which also decays via the weak force. All muons decay to three particles (an electron plus two neutrinos of different types), but the daughter particles are believed to originate newly in the decay.
Like all elementary particles, the muon has a corresponding antiparticle of opposite charge but equal mass and spin: the antimuon (also called a positive muon). Muons are denoted by μ− and antimuons by μ+. Muons were previously called mu mesons, but are not classified as mesons by modern particle physicists (see History).
Muons have a mass of 105.7 MeV/c2, which is about 200 times the mass of an electron. Since the muon's interactions are very similar to those of the electron, a muon can be thought of as a much heavier version of the electron. Due to their greater mass, muons are not as sharply accelerated when they encounter electromagnetic fields, and do not emit as much bremsstrahlung radiation. This allows muons of a given energy to penetrate far more deeply into matter than electrons, since the deceleration of electrons and muons is primarily due to energy loss by the bremsstrahlung mechanism. As an example, so-called "secondary muons", generated by cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere, can penetrate to the Earth's surface, and even into deep mines.
Because muons have a very large mass and energy compared with the decay energy of radioactivity, they are never produced by radioactive decay. They are, however, produced in copious amounts in high-energy interactions in normal matter, such as occur during certain particle accelerator experiments with hadrons, and also naturally in cosmic ray interactions with matter. These interactions usually first produce pi mesons, which then most often decay to muons.
As with the case of the other charged leptons, the muon has an associated muon neutrino. Muon neutrinos are denoted by ν μ.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA