October 16, 2014

Light bending material facilitates the search for new particles




Particle physicists have a hard time identifying all the elementary particles created in their particle accelerators. But now researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have designed a material that makes it much easier to distinguish the particles.
To investigate the matter's smallest constituents, physicists have particles colliding with each other at very high speeds, for example in the particle accelerator LHC at Cern. The collisions create bursts of common and rare particles, all invisible to the eye.