What is it about?

We aim to understand in depth the correlations between light interacting particles. Numerical methods are used to solve the equations of a quantum system involving a light positronium atom, formed by an electron and a positron. We apply it to the study of a simple system (toy model) where positronium is trapped inside voids of a material. This model describes the state of positronium inside a material that is found in typical positron annihilation spectroscopy experiments.

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Why is it important?

The description of positronium inside matter has an immediate interest in the interpretation of positron annihilation spectroscopy experiments. But advances in the description of strongly correlated light particles will improve the understanding of many systems where non-trivial correlation effects dominate the behaviour of carriers in semiconductors and exotic superconductors.

Perspectives

Why is Ps able to measure the size of voids? Why is it not working in metals and semiconductors? We think we know the answer, but if we cannot use the quantum theory to give a quantitative explanation we cannot be sure that we really understand it. We provide accurate simulation of a very simple system which we can tweak (computational experiments) to gain knowledge about the interaction of Ps with matter.

Dr Asier Zubiaga
ETH Zürich, D-CHAB

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This page is a summary of: Pick-Off Annihilation of Positronium in Matter Using Full Correlation Single Particle Potentials: Solid He, The Journal of Physical Chemistry, January 2015, American Chemical Society (ACS),
DOI: 10.1021/jp5106295.
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