annihilation
Sign in to savethumb|A Feynman diagram showing the mutual annihilation of a bound state [[electron positron pair into two photons. This bound state is more commonly known as positronium.]]
AI overview
Annihilation is a process where a particle and its antimatter counterpart collide and completely convert into energy, typically in the form of light or other particles. This matters because it demonstrates one of nature's fundamental principles—that matter and energy are interchangeable—and has practical applications in medical imaging and theoretical physics.
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Article
11 sectionsContents
- History
- Production of a single boson
- Examples
- Electron–positron annihilation
- Proton–antiproton annihilation
- Higgs production
- See also
- References
- Footnotes
- Notations
- External links
thumb|A Feynman diagram showing the mutual annihilation of a bound state [[electron positron pair into two photons. This bound state is more commonly known as positronium.]]
In particle physics, annihilation is the process that occurs when a subatomic particle collides with its respective antiparticle to produce other particles, such as an electron colliding with a positron to produce two photons. The total energy and momentum of the initial pair are conserved in the process and distributed among a set of other particles in the final state. Antiparticles have exactly opposite additive quantum numbers from particles, so the sums of all quantum numbers of such an original pair are zero. Hence, any set of particles may be produced whose total quantum numbers are also zero as long as conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and conservation of spin are obeyed.