Photoproduction of Positive Pions fromAl27andV

Making pions with laser light

“…As such, both neutrons and positrons can be produced with terrestrial, non-accelerator sources. However, more exotic particles requiring higher rest mass (>100 MeV/c 2 ) than typically available from natural radioactive processes (decay, fusion, fission) must be created using high-energy particles either from a cosmic source or an accelerator [19][20][21]. Moreover, unlike the relatively stable half-lives of positrons (>10 46 s) and neutrons (881 s), all of these higher-energy particles have half-lives of 2 μs or less, making synchronization crucial for potential applications and controlled measurements.…”