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There are different types of colliders, leptonic and hadronic colliders. Hadrons, usually protons, are composite particles so when you smash them together a wid
by throw_away_777 10y ago
There are different types of colliders, leptonic and hadronic colliders. Hadrons, usually protons, are composite particles so when you smash them together a wide range of output is produced. You can absolutely see unexpected things, and a lot of effort goes into analyzing and collecting data to explore many avenues for new physics. Leptonic colliders (usually electrons) involve point-like particles, so here you scan the energy and indeed it is much easier to find things when you know where to look.
- Coding_Cat 10y agoCould you elaborate? I thought the difference between leptonic and hadronic colliders was only in the beam & resulting signal purity? Smashing an electron and a positron together produces pure energy to be converted into matter. It could generate photons or it could generate Hadrons just as likely could it not (as long as all quantum numbers are conserved)?
- Analog24 10y agoProtons are not fundamental particles, they are made up of quarks and gluons. The exact composition is determined by the nuclear PDF's, it is not nearly as simple as "protons are made of two Up quarks and a Down quark". As a result, the actual energy of each collision varies widely since the amount of energy 'given' to each parton (quark or gluon) is randomly distributed. So even though the beam energy is set to a specific value the energy of each collision is not given and must be measured in each case. Different collision energies lead to different interactions taking place. Contrast this to a lepton collider where electrons and positrons are being collided. They are both fundamental particles so they collide with the full beam energy each time, making it possible to conduct very precise measurements at a specific energy. Edit: fixed some typos