Ratio of Anti-matter to Matter Creation in High Energy Collisions

Most recent answer: 06/03/2016

Q:
In a particle accelerator why is anti-matter only created every one million collisions. What is different about that one millionth time?
- Anonymoussss (age lot)
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A:

The ratio depends on the total energy of the collision.  At incident particle energies below 2 GeV there is simply not enough extra energy to create anti-nucleons.   All you can make are mesons, some of which can be classified as anti particles such as a π+ - π- pair.   Anti-protons or anti-neutrons need much more energy.    At extremely high energies, such as at the colliders at FermiLab or CERN, the ratio of created anti-particles to particles becomes close to one. 

LeeH


(published on 06/03/2016)