Treatment Maculopapular Rash

real virtual particles

art lasers have the power to create matter by capturing ghostly particles, according to quantum mechanics, permeate the apparently empty space.

The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics implies that space can never be truly empty. In contrast, random fluctuations give birth to a boiling cauldron of particles such as electrons and their antimatter counterparts, called positrons.

These so called "virtual particles" normally annihilate other too quickly to notice them. But physicists predicted in the 1930's that a strong electric field transform real virtual particles can be observed. The field pushes them in opposite directions, as have opposite electrical charges, separating them so that you can not destroy each other.

The laser is ideal for this task because their light has strong electric fields. In 1997, physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, California, used a laser to create a few electron-positron pairs. Now, new calculations suggest art lasers will be able to create pairs and by the millions.

chain reaction

The SLAC experiment, only electron-positron pair was created at a time. But with more powerful lasers, a chain reaction becomes probable.

The first pair is accelerated to high speed by the laser, causing them to emit light. This light, along with the laser, generates more pairs, for example Alexander Fedotov National Council for Nuclear Research in Moscow University and his colleagues in a study appearing in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"A large number of particles will range from vacuum," said John Kirk, Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, who was not involved in the study. In

lasers which are concentrated around 1026 watts per square centimeter, this reaction out of effective control must convert the laser light in millions of electron-positron pairs, the team calculates.

antimatter factory

That kind of intensity could be achieved with a laser that will build the Extreme Light Infrastructure project in Europe. The first version of the laser could be built in 2015, but it might take a couple of years after completing the necessary updates to get to 1,026 per square centimeter, said study co-author, Georg Korn, Institute Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany.

The ability to generate large numbers of positrons might be useful for particle colliders such as the International Linear Collider project, which will break the electrons and positrons together, says Kirk McDonald of the University Princeton, New Jersey.

But Pisin Chen of National Taiwan University in Taipei, says the cost of high-powered laser can make this method more expensive than the alternative. The standard way to create large numbers of positrons today is to shoot a beam of high energy electrons in a metal piece produce electron-positron pairs.