"God particle" is not enough!Scientists want to build the world's first μon collision machine

Text ｜ Li Muzi

The momentum of building a new particle collision machine in the United States is becoming more and more fierce, and the latter can shatter the heavier "cousin" -Miao Jiezi (μ child). Physicists want to use it to discover new particles.

Although the short -lived characteristics of μon make this collision difficult to build technology, its main advantage is that it can be designed smaller and cheaper. However, it is still far away to achieve this vision. It was the earliest to 2040, but its advocates said that they need to start research and development.

Now, physicists around the world are considering the feasibility of this collision. Karri Di Petrillo, a particle physicist at the Patami National Laboratory of Badaova, Illinois, said this is a "bold and promising vision."

In 2012, the large strong son collision (LHC) of the European Nuclear Research Center (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland discovered the Higgs particles, but did not find other new particles expected by physicists. Because it exceeds the scope of the machine. Instead, the μon collision machine will be a "discovery" machine, which can find new particles through unprecedented energy collisions.

Physicists' support for the μon collision appeared during the "Snomas" period. This is a major planning activity of the US particle physics industry once every ten years, which aims to propose a scientific vision. Organizers will refine the views of thousands of scientists into a report, which ultimately affects the funding of the US government. In the white papers of the "Energy Frontier" part written by physicists, almost one -third of the μon collision machine was written.

μon can be accelerated to higher energy than electrons, as they lose less energy during synchronous radiation. They have a greater advantage than proton collisions. This includes a collision between the quarks composed of particles, and each quark only carries a small part of the total collision energy.

Because μon is a basic particle, each collision involves all the energy of the particles. This means that a 10 trillion electronic volt and a 10 -kilometer -long μon collision machine can produce particles with the same energy as the 1 million electronic volt and 90 kilometers long proton machines built.

The concept of μon collision machine has existed since the 1960s, but it did not develop feasible technologies to deal with the characteristics of μons until recent years, including μon's prone to decay, producing annoying background noise, and difficult to produce it. Seasoning it to form a strong beam. Prisoncilla Cushman, a physicist at the University of Minnesota, said the reason why American physicists were excited because they had enough time to develop and create this machine to replace the Higgs particle factory.

Joel Butler, a particle physicist in Fermi National Laboratory, said whether it will build in the United States on the feasibility of funds, politics and technology. Caterina Vernieri, a particle physicist at Stanford University, said people's enthusiasm for the μon collision machine is related to the cost and sustainability of cost and sustainability.

In the past ten years, whether it is designed to find large -quality detectors for dark matter, or on a large -scale strong collision machine, it has not been able to find a dark matter predicted, that is, weak interaction, large -quality particles (WIMP) This means that dark matter is definitely more strange than people think.

SUCHITA Kulkarni, a dark matter physicist at the University of Graz, Austria, said physicists want to find lighter dark matter candidates and re -examine their research. Considering that dark matter may be used as a whole rather than a particle, Micah Buuck, a physicist at Stanford University, said that to find it, you need to conduct some large and sensitive experiments, such as those who are already looking for WIMP, and there are more ones. Small experiments.

Next year will be a critical moment. At that time, the US Federal Performance Physics Priority Team will use Snoomas's conclusions and budget considerations to make investment advice from the investors of the Energy Department and the National Science Foundation in the next ten years.

"China Science News" (2022-08-10 The 1st edition of the news)

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