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Particle physics

Positrons ride the wave

Nature volume 524, pages 422–423 (2015)Cite this article

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Experiments reveal that positrons — the antimatter equivalents of electrons — can be rapidly accelerated using a plasma wave. The findings pave the way to high-energy electron–positron particle colliders. See Letter p.442

Particle accelerators and colliders have been the backbone of research into elementary particle physics for almost a century. The next generation of colliders must be able to generate collision energies for lepton particles, such as electrons and positrons, in the teraelectronvolt range (1 TeV is 1012 electronvolts). This will complement discoveries being made by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. On page 442 of this issue, Corde et al.1 report a system for accelerating positrons — the antimatter counterparts of electrons — that might enable such instruments to be realized.

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Figure 1: Mechanism for positron acceleration.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philippe Piot is in the Department of Physics, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois 60115, USA, and at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois.,

    Philippe Piot

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  1. Philippe Piot
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Correspondence to Philippe Piot.

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Piot, P. Positrons ride the wave. Nature 524, 422–423 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/524422a

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