James Vary has been waiting for nuclear physics experiments to confirm the reality of a "tetraneutron" that he and his colleagues predicted and first announced during a presentation in the summer of 2014).
"We always have to say we're waiting for experimental confirmation when we present a theory," said Vary.
In the case of four neutrons briefly bound together in a resonance, that day for Vary and an international team of theorists is now here.
An international group led by researchers from Germany's Technical University of Darmstadt made a discovery that could lead to a better understanding of the universe. The exotic state of matter could be useful in newer technologies.
The nucleus of an atom is made up of particles with no charge and positively charged protons. After a few minutes, individual neutrons become protons. A state of matter that is temporarily stable before it decays is called a resonance.
The tetraneutron is what I entered. The theorists used the supercomputing power at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to calculate how long it would take for four neutrons to form a state. It's hard to believe, but physicists can study it.
A unit of measurement common in high-energy and nuclear physics is the energy of the tetraneutron. The calculated width of the plotted energy spike was about 1.5 million electron volts. The theorists believed the energy would be between 0.7 and 1.0 million electron volts while the width would be between 1.1 and 1.7 million. Adoption of different candidates for the interaction between the neutrons led to this sensitivity.
According to a paper published in the journal Nature, the energy and width of the radioisotope beam factory were found to be around two million electron volts. These are larger than the theory results, but Vary said uncertainties in the current theoretical and experimental results could cover the difference.
It's a big shock to the nuclear physics world that it can be measured before it breaks up. It's a very strange system.
He said it is a new state of matter. It points to possibilities. If you put these together, what will happen? Is it possible you could get more stability?
In 2002 the structure was proposed in certain reactions involving one of the elements, and that's when the search for a tetraneutron began. In experimental results published in 2016 there were hints of atetraneutron.
The second chargeless element of the nuclear chart will be thetetraneutron. It gives a new platform for theories of the strong interactions between neutrons.
The Institute for Nuclear Physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt is where Meytal Duer works. A five-sigma statistical signal is a definitive discovery with a one in 3.5 million chance of being a statistical outlier.
There was a theoretical prediction published in Physical Review Letters. The author is a scientist at Moscow State University in Russia and a visiting scientist at Iowa State. Vary is an author.
Can we make a small star on the planet? A summary of the project is what it's called. When a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses into a super- dense neutron structure, a neutron star is what is left. A short-lived, very-light neutron star is what the tetraneutron is.
What is Vary's reaction? He gave up on the experiments. During the Pandemic, I had no idea about this. This came as a huge surprise. We might actually have something new.
More information: M. Duer et al, Observation of a correlated free four-neutron system, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04827-6 Journal information: Physical Review Letters , Nature
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