What can muons be used for?
Muons have applications across a very broad range of areas. We can use them for studying magnetism, superconductivity, diffusion and charge transport, chemical reactions and molecular dynamics. In many of these areas, they give us complementary information to other techniques such as neutron scattering.
Can muons be used for energy?
With deuterium-tritium as fuel, a fusion power generator employing the novel muon generator could give more than 1 MW thermal power. The thermal power using pure deuterium as fuel may be up to 220 kW initially: It will increase with time up to over 1 MW due to the production of tritium in one reaction branch.
What is a Pionic atom?
The pionic atom is a system consisting of a pion and an atomic nucleus. One can therefore expect that by investigating pionic atoms, information is obtained about the two components of this system as well as about the inter action between them.
Are muonic atoms stable?
Muonic atoms should be stable in electron-degenerate matter (white dwarf material) as long as the Fermi energy is more than mμ−me. This is more or less exactly a analogy with neutron stability in the nucleus where the the protons are effectively in a degenerate state.
Why is the muon important?
The ubiquitous particles are helping to map the innards of pyramids and volcanoes, and spot missing nuclear waste.
What is special about the muon?
Muons have the same negative charge as electrons but 200 times the mass. They are made when high-energy particles called cosmic rays slam into atoms in Earth’s atmosphere. They could weigh more than 10 tonnes and relied on muons’ ability to ionize particles of sometimes explosive gases.
Is muon a meson?
The muon is an unstable subatomic particle with a mean lifetime of 2.2 μs, much longer than many other subatomic particles. Formerly, muons were called “mu mesons”, but are not classified as mesons by modern particle physicists (see § History), and that name is no longer used by the physics community.
What is muonic hydrogen atom?
Muonic hydrogen is an exotic hydrogen atom, where a muon (instead of an electron) orbits the proton. Because the muon is 200 times heavier than the electron, the muon’s orbit is 200 times closer to the proton in muonic hydrogen than that of the electron in regular hydrogen.
Can muons replace electrons?
They can replace electrons in atoms. If you point this beam of muons into a target, then some of the muons will replace electrons in the target’s atoms. This is very nice because these “muonic atoms” are described by non-relativistic quantum mechanics with the electron mass replaced with ~100 MeV.
What is a muon and why is it important?
They are made when high-energy particles called cosmic rays slam into atoms in Earth’s atmosphere. Travelling at close to the speed of light, muons shower Earth from all angles. They could weigh more than 10 tonnes and relied on muons’ ability to ionize particles of sometimes explosive gases.