Table of Contents
How does a pion decay into a muon?
Since the charged pions decay into two particles, a muon and a muon neutrino or antineutrino, then conservation of momentum and energy give the decay products definite energies. This contrasts with the three-particle decay of the neutral pion in which the emitted particles have a range of energies and momenta.
What does pion decay into?
Neutral pions quickly decay into gamma-rays, while charged pions become electrons, positrons, and neutrinos.
How are muon-neutrinos created?
High-energy muon-neutrinos were produced by decay of pi-mesons and were directed to a detector so that their reactions with matter could…
What are pions and muons?
Whereas the muon is uninfluenced by the strong force that works inside the nucleus, the pion plays a role in binding protons with neutrons. This means that high-energy muons can penetrate far into matter before they interact or decay; indeed, some cosmic-ray muons travel hundreds of metres below ground.
How are pions formed?
A pion-producing shot begins when laser pulses are fired into a cell containing helium gas. The resulting ionization and wakefield acceleration generate a beam of 1 GeV electrons, which passes through a 1.5-cm-thick lead target to produce additional electrons, positrons, and gamma rays.
Do kaons decay into muons?
In the following, two-body kaon decays to a muon and a SM neutrino are denoted K + → μ + ν μ , while those with a muon and a heavy neutrino are denoted K + → μ + ν h ; the notation K + → μ + N indicates either case.
What type of particle is muon neutrino?
Muon neutrino
| Composition | Elementary particle |
|---|---|
| Statistics | Fermionic |
| Family | Lepton |
| Generation | Second |
| Interactions | Weak, Gravity |
Why are neutrinos and antineutrinos produced in beta decay?
The neutrinos were postulated by Pauli in order to have the conservation of energy, momentum and angular momentum in beta decay. The conversion of a neutron to a proton, an electron and an (electron) antineutrino is an example of a beta decay. In these reactions, we have the conservation of lepton number.
What is the charge of a muon neutrino?
0 e
Muon neutrino
| Composition | Elementary particle |
|---|---|
| Electric charge | 0 e |
| Color charge | No |
| Spin | 12 |
| Weak isospin | 12 |
What are pions made of?
The pion is a meson. The π+ is considered to be made up of an up and an anti-down quark. The neutral pion is considered to be a combination of quark-antiquark pairs: Pions interact with nuclei and transform a neutron to a proton or vice versa as indicated by the Feynman diagram above.
What decays into a neutron and a pion?
In particle physics, proton decay is a hypothetical form of particle decay in which the proton decays into lighter subatomic particles, such as a neutral pion and a positron.
Is a muon made of quarks?
Mu mesons, however, had shown themselves to be fundamental particles (leptons) like electrons, with no quark structure.
What is neutrino in beta decay?
The neutrino and the antineutrino are high energy elementary particles with little or no mass and are released in order to conserve energy during the decay process. Negative beta decay is far more common than positive beta decay.
What happens when muons decay?
Muon decay mechanism Negative muons are unstable and decay within a few microseconds into an electron accompanied by 2 neutrinos. In a first step, the muon turns into a W boson accompanied by a muonic neutrino. This transformation is temporarily authorized by the Heisenberg quantum uncertainty principle.
What are neutrinos and antineutrinos?
An antineutrino is the antiparticle partner of the neutrino, meaning that the antineutrino has the same mass but opposite “charge” of the neutrino. Although neutrinos are electromagnetically neutral (they have no electric charge and no magnetic moment), they may carry another kind of charge: lepton number.
How pions are formed?
What does Pi+ decay into in pion decay?
Pion decay will always produce leptons, like electrons. π+ will usually decay into one muon, and one muon neutrino. π– will usually decay into one antimuon and one muon antineutrino.
Is it possible for a muon to decay into an electron?
is technically possible, for example by neutrino oscillation of a virtual muon neutrino into an electron neutrino, but such a decay is astronomically unlikely and therefore should be experimentally unobservable: Less than one in 10 50 muon decays should produce such a decay.
How do muon neutrinos decay?
They decay via the weak interaction. Because leptonic family numbers are conserved in the absence of an extremely unlikely immediate neutrino oscillation, one of the product neutrinos of muon decay must be a muon-type neutrino and the other an electron-type antineutrino (antimuon decay produces the corresponding antiparticles, as detailed below).
What is the product of muon decay?
Because charge must be conserved, one of the products of muon decay is always an electron of the same charge as the muon (a positron if it is a positive muon). Thus all muons decay to at least an electron, and two neutrinos.