What happens when matter and antimatter collide?

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What happens when matter and antimatter collide?

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Answer 1 · 2018-05-29T18:23:25

Particle annihilation occurs and energy is released, typically as gamma radiation.

An example is an electron-positron annihilation:

Trond Saue, "Relativistic Hamiltonians for Chemistry: A Primer", ChemPhysChem 2011, 12, p. 3086

(Electron Zitterbewegung basically means a local fluctuation of the electron position.)

When these collide, each particle has mass $m_{e} = 9.10938356 \times 10^{- 31} kg$ $m_e = 9.10938356 xx 10^(-31) "kg"$ . Conservation of particles, angular momentum, and energy is observed, and for the low-energy case, we write this process as:

$_{- 1}^{0} e +_{1}^{0} e \to 2_{0}^{0} γ$ $""_(-1)^(0) e + ""_(1)^(0) e -> 2""_(0)^(0) gamma$

The energy released is $m_{e} c^{2}$ $m_ec^2$ per particle, so the total energy released is

$E = 2 m_{e} c^{2} = 2 \cdot 9.10938356 \times 10^{- 31} kg \cdot {(2.99792458 \times 10^{8} m/s)}^{2}$ $E = 2m_ec^2 = 2 cdot 9.10938356 xx 10^(-31) "kg" cdot (2.99792458 xx 10^8 "m/s")^2$

$= 1.64 \times 10^{- 13} J$ $= 1.64 xx 10^(-13) "J"$

or about $1.022 MeV$ $"1.022 MeV"$ (i.e. $0.511 MeV/photon$ $"0.511 MeV/photon"$ ).

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What happens when matter and antimatter collide?

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