PARTICLE PHYSICS

 

Home

Neutrino

Cockroft & Walton Experiment

Antimatter

Pair Production

Pair Annihilation

Particle Accelerators

Four Fundamental Forces

Familes of Particles

Quark Model

Fun Stuff!

Sitemap

 

 

 

Pair Production

The production of matter from energy

 

This is the creating of two particles from energy.

In the process, a particle and its anti-particle are produced.

Momentum and electric charge are conserved.

 

How does it work?

A high speed gamma ray is projected at a nucleus of matter (e.g. a Lead nucleus). Each gamma ray photon loses its energy ( hf ), when it collides with the nucleus, producing an electron positron pair.

Some of the energy is converted into the mass of the electron and positron. The rest is the kinetic energy of the electron and the position.

Mathematically:

equation

 

Run a simulation of pair production