Sydney Seminar: Getting antimatter out of dark matter,

a Colloquium given by CoEPP visitor Professor Zurab Berezhiani

I discuss the possibility of dark matter conversion into our antimatter, if dark matter is represented by a hypothetical mirror matter. Any neutral particle, elementary or composite, can have mixing with its mass degenerate mirror twin. In particular, mirror neutron could oscillate into our anti-neutron with experimentally accessible rates depending on environmental conditions as matter density and magnetic fields. Existing experimental and astrophysical bounds allow these oscillations to be rather fast, with oscillation time of the order of a second. Also mirror hydrogen atom could be converted into our anti-hydrogen, but with much larger oscillation time, order one million years or so. These phenomena can have fascinating physical and astrophysical implications, and they can be tested in low cost experiments. If discovered, they can have far going consequences: matter exchange with parallel mirror world would provide an alternative source of energy.

 

Mon, 6 Jun 2016
3.00 PM
Location

Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics, University of Sydney

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