Concepts, Problems, & Opportunities for use of Annihilation Energy:

An Annotated Briefing on Near-Term RDT&E to Assess Feasibility

RAND Note N-2302-AF/RC

B. W. Augenstein

For production of antiprotons by interactions produced from thecollision of a high energy proton beam on a metal target at rest in thelaboratory system, the fundamental parameter of interest is the numberof antiprotons produced per incident proton of energy E. While a simple relativisticcalculation shows that the threshold kinetic energy E_T to produce nnucleon-antinucleon pairs, M the particle mass, is E_T~2 Mn(n+2), so that nantinucleons could result, the actual number resulting is very much smaller because agreat many competing reactions arise. The chart shows the actual antinucleon production in theface of the competing reactions. Thus, a 500 GeV proton, if all its energy could be devoted toproducing appropriate antinucleons, could produce ~15 antiprotons. Competing processes intoday's techniques lower this number to ~10^-1, as shown.

The chart collects data from a number of sources. It shows thatappreciable uncertainties in absolute values of production still exist,so that some mean values must be used. Even as late as the early 1980sproduction cross section corrections of a factor of ~2 were needed forthe CERN machines.

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