Anti-matter Production and Other Accelerator Questions

why when you have particles colliding do you get so little anti matter but more matter. Is it cause it annihilates throughout the process? What if you take the energy produced from the little tiny explosions and use them to power the accelerator. So the photons produced will mostly be converted to electrical energy but the matter/antimatter is traped? would that make it more practicle to produce antimatter on a larger scale cause your not wasting as much power? What if you take two hadron collider or three hadron coliders to colide not just two particle beams, but four or five or six. so instead of looking like a donut, it will be like two intersecting donuts. like the letter 8 or infinity.
- steven chernets (age 22)
Brooklyn,NY , USA

Hi Steven,

The production rate ratios of matter and anti-matter depend on the incident energy of the bombarding particle and the constituencies of the  target material.  A low energy proton beam incident on a nucleus will usually just knock out a few protons and neutrons.  Increase the energy enough and you can start getting positive pions and their anti-particles in pairs.  Increase it still further and you can get proton and anti-proton pairs.  Same for neutron anti-neutron pairs.

Your idea of using the anti-matter to recycle the energy doesn't work.  There are always unavoidable losses that will lower the over all efficiency.     The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics rears its ugly head.

Multiple accelerators hitting a common target would in principle work but it would be extremely costly and doesn't provide any advantage over just increasing the intensity of a single set of intersecting beams.

LeeH

 

 

 

 

 

(published on 08/10/2015)