Positron

The positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1 e, a spin of 1/2 (same as electron), and has the same mass as an electron. When a positron collides with an electron, annihilation occurs. If this collision occurs at low energies, it results in the production of two or more gamma ray photons. Positrons can be created by positron emission radioactive decay (through weak interactions), or by pair production from a sufficiently energetic photon which is interacting with an atom in a material. In 1928, Paul Dirac published a paper proposing that electrons can have both a positive and negative charge. This paper introduced the Dirac equation, a unification of quantum mechanics, special relativity, and the then-new concept of electron spin to explain the Zeeman effect. The paper did not explicitly predict a new particle but did allow for electrons having either positive or negative energy as solutions. Hermann Weyl then published a paper discussing the mathematical implications of the negative energy solution. The positive-energy solution explained experimental results, but Dirac was puzzled by the equally valid negative-energy solution that the mathematical model allowed. Quantum mechanics did not allow the negative energy solution to simply be ignored, as classical mechanics often did in such equations; the dual solution implied the possibility of an electron spontaneously jumping between positive and negative energy states. However, no such transition had yet been observed experimentally. Dirac wrote a follow-up paper in December 1929 that attempted to explain the unavoidable negative-energy solution for the relativistic electron. He argued that '... an electron with negative energy moves in an external field as though it carries a positive charge.' He further asserted that all of space could be regarded as a 'sea' of negative energy states that were filled, so as to prevent electrons jumping between positive energy states (negative electric charge) and negative energy states (positive charge). The paper also explored the possibility of the proton being an island in this sea, and that it might actually be a negative-energy electron. Dirac acknowledged that the proton having a much greater mass than the electron was a problem, but expressed 'hope' that a future theory would resolve the issue. Robert Oppenheimer argued strongly against the proton being the negative-energy electron solution to Dirac's equation. He asserted that if it were, the hydrogen atom would rapidly self-destruct. Persuaded by Oppenheimer's argument, Dirac published a paper in 1931 that predicted the existence of an as-yet-unobserved particle that he called an 'anti-electron' that would have the same mass and the opposite charge as an electron and that would mutually annihilate upon contact with an electron. Feynman, and earlier Stueckelberg, proposed an interpretation of the positron as an electron moving backward in time, reinterpreting the negative-energy solutions of the Dirac equation. Electrons moving backward in time would have a positive electric charge. Wheeler invoked this concept to explain the identical properties shared by all electrons, suggesting that 'they are all the same electron' with a complex, self-intersecting worldline. Yoichiro Nambu later applied it to all production and annihilation of particle-antiparticle pairs, stating that 'the eventual creation and annihilation of pairs that may occur now and then is no creation or annihilation, but only a change of direction of moving particles, from the past to the future, or from the future to the past.' The backwards in time point of view is nowadays accepted as completely equivalent to other pictures, but it does not have anything to do with the macroscopic terms 'cause' and 'effect', which do not appear in a microscopic physical description. Dmitri Skobeltsyn first observed the positron in 1929. While using a Wilson cloud chamber to try to detect gamma radiation in cosmic rays, Skobeltsyn detected particles that acted like electrons but curved in the opposite direction in an applied magnetic field. Likewise, in 1929 Chung-Yao Chao, a graduate student at Caltech, noticed some anomalous results that indicated particles behaving like electrons, but with a positive charge, though the results were inconclusive and the phenomenon was not pursued.