Energy Talk in Particle Accelerators

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Particle accelerators are considered hallmark of human technological advancement. Colliding subatomic particles in high energies, particle accelerators have brought dramatic paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe. Accelerators generally collide energetic particles together and look for the change in the energy of the system. This measurement of energy in colliding particles plays a vital role in the understanding of the events occurring inside the particle accelerators. Understanding the effect of particle accelerator in the human society is incomplete without the discussion of the energies that are involved in the accelerators.
Particle accelerators, as its name suggest, accelerate particles and after those particles have reached certain amount of energy, they collide them. The amount of energy required in the particles depends on the products the physicists want and the initial conditions of the experiment. If the accelerator is about to collide two like charge particles( e.g. proton pair) , then those particles must have enough kinetic energy so that they could overcome their electrostatic repulsive force and reach close enough for the nuclear force to be effective(~1fm). It is essential for all like charge particles to pass this threshold electrostatic potential energy, called the Coulomb barrier, to undergo anything nuclear in nature. On the other hand, if a physicist wants to produce pion (π0 or π+) by colliding two protons (p), it is essential for the protons to have enough kinetic energy that the energy from the collision is enough to create a particle with the desired rest mass, as given by the mass energy equivalence relationship. The threshold energy for the protons to create a pion with rest mass of 135M...

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...llisions will not only elevate our lifestyle but also define ourselves in the process. Finding answers to mindboggling question just by colliding particles together, in a way shows how capable humans are. We should never get tired of this study about the universe, it defines what we are.

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