Pionium is a

composite particle This is a list of known and hypothesized particles. Elementary particles Elementary particles are particles with no measurable internal structure; that is, it is unknown whether they are composed of other particles. They are the fundamental ob ...

consisting of one and one

meson In particle physics, a meson ( or ) is a type of hadronic subatomic particle composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks, usually one of each, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of quark subparticle ...

. It can be created, for instance, by interaction of a proton beam accelerated by a

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Large accelerators are used for fun ...

and a target

nucleus Nucleus ( : nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: *Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom * Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucl ...

. Pionium has a short lifetime, predicted by

chiral Chirality is a property of asymmetry important in several branches of science. The word ''chirality'' is derived from the Greek (''kheir''), "hand", a familiar chiral object. An object or a system is ''chiral'' if it is distinguishable from i ...

perturbation theory In mathematics and applied mathematics, perturbation theory comprises methods for finding an approximate solution to a problem, by starting from the exact solution of a related, simpler problem. A critical feature of the technique is a middl ...

to be . It decays mainly into two

mesons In particle physics, a meson ( or ) is a type of hadronic subatomic particle composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks, usually one of each, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of quark subparticles, ...

, and to a smaller extent into two photons. It has been investigated at CERN to measure its lifetime. The Dimeson Relativistic Atomic Complex (DIRAC) experiment at the

Proton Synchrotron The Proton Synchrotron (PS, sometimes also referred to as CPS) is a particle accelerator at CERN. It is CERN's first synchrotron, beginning its operation in 1959. For a brief period the PS was the world's highest energy particle accelerator. It ...

was able to detect 21227 atomic pairs from a total of events, which allows the pionium lifetime to be determined to within statistical errors of 9%. In 2006, the NA48/2 collaboration at CERN published an evidence for pionium production and decay in decays of charged

kaon KAON (Karlsruhe ontology) is an ontology infrastructure developed by the University of Karlsruhe and the Research Center for Information Technologies in Karlsruhe. Its first incarnation was developed in 2002 and supported an enhanced version o ...

s, studying mass spectra of daughter

pion In particle physics, a pion (or a pi meson, denoted with the Greek letter pi: ) is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Each pion consists of a quark and an antiquark and is therefore a meson. Pions are the lightest mesons and, more gen ...

pairs in the events with three pions in the final state K^± → π^±(ππ)_atom → π^±π⁰π⁰. This was followed by a precision measurement of the S-wave pion

scattering length The scattering length in quantum mechanics describes low-energy scattering. For potentials that decay faster than 1/r^3 as r\to \infty, it is defined as the following low-energy limit: : \lim_ k\cot\delta(k) =- \frac\;, where a is the scattering ...

, published by the collaboration in 2009. The results of the above experiments will provide crucial tests of low-energy

QCD In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type ...

predictions.

References

{{Particles Mesons Onia

See also

References