In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter, and can be thought of as matter with reversed charge, parity, and time, known as CPT reversal. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioactive decay, but only a tiny fraction of these have successfully been bound together in experiments to form antiatoms. Minuscule numbers of antiparticles can be generated at particle accelerators; however, total artificial production has been only a few nanograms. No macroscopic amount of antimatter has ever been assembled due to the extreme cost and difficulty of production and handling. Nonetheless, antimatter is an essential component of widely available applications related to beta decay, such as positron emission tomography, radiation therapy, and industrial imaging.
Interstellar travel is the hypothetical travel of spacecraft between star systems. Due to the vast distances between the Solar System and nearby stars, interstellar travel is not practicable with current propulsion technologies.
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word laser originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, based on theoretical work by Charles H. Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow and the optical amplifier patented by Gordon Gould.
Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view objects and areas of objects that cannot be seen with the naked eye. There are three well-known branches of microscopy: optical, electron, and scanning probe microscopy, along with the emerging field of X-ray microscopy.
Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to accelerate spacecraft and artificial satellites. In-space propulsion exclusively deals with propulsion systems used in the vacuum of space and should not be confused with space launch or atmospheric entry.
An antimatter rocket is a proposed class of rockets that use antimatter as their power source. There are several designs that attempt to accomplish this goal. The advantage to this class of rocket is that a large fraction of the rest mass of a matter/antimatter mixture may be converted to energy, allowing antimatter rockets to have a far higher energy density and specific impulse than any other proposed class of rocket.
An exotic atom is an otherwise normal atom in which one or more sub-atomic particles have been replaced by other particles. For example, electrons may be replaced by other negatively charged particles such as muons or pions. Because these substitute particles are usually unstable, exotic atoms typically have very short lifetimes and no exotic atom observed so far can persist under normal conditions.
Nuclear pulse propulsion or external pulsed plasma propulsion is a hypothetical method of spacecraft propulsion that uses nuclear explosions for thrust. It originated as Project Orion with support from DARPA, after a suggestion by Stanislaw Ulam in 1947. Newer designs using inertial confinement fusion have been the baseline for most later designs, including Project Daedalus and Project Longshot.
The antiproton,
p
, is the antiparticle of the proton. Antiprotons are stable, but they are typically short-lived, since any collision with a proton will cause both particles to be annihilated in a burst of energy.
Antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion is a variation of nuclear pulse propulsion based upon the injection of antimatter into a mass of nuclear fuel to initiate a nuclear chain reaction for propulsion when the fuel does not normally have a critical mass.
Microbotics is the field of miniature robotics, in particular mobile robots with characteristic dimensions less than 1 mm. The term can also be used for robots capable of handling micrometer size components.
Emilio Gino Segrè was an Italian and naturalized-American physicist and Nobel laureate, who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton, a subatomic antiparticle, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1959 along with Owen Chamberlain.
Laser pumping is the act of energy transfer from an external source into the gain medium of a laser. The energy is absorbed in the medium, producing excited states in its atoms. When for a period of time the number of particles in one excited state exceeds the number of particles in the ground state or a less-excited state, population inversion is achieved. In this condition, the mechanism of stimulated emission can take place and the medium can act as a laser or an optical amplifier. The pump power must be higher than the lasing threshold of the laser.
The Trident Laser was a high power, sub-petawatt class, solid-state laser facility located at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, originally built in the late 1980s for Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research by KMS Fusion, founded by Kip Siegel, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it was later moved to Los Alamos in the early 1990s to be used in ICF and materials research. The Trident Laser has been decommissioned, with final experiments in 2017, and is now in storage at the University of Texas at Austin.
Philip H. Bucksbaum is an American atomic physicist, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science in the Departments of Physics, Applied Physics, and Photon Science at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He also directs the Stanford PULSE Institute.
Lowell S. Brown was an American theoretical physicist who was a Staff Scientist and Laboratory Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Professor Emeritus of physics at University of Washington. He was a student of Julian Schwinger at Harvard University and a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Brown authored a book on Quantum Field Theory that has received over 5,000 citations, and authored or co-authored over 150 articles that have accumulated over 11,000 citations. Brown died on April 5, 2023, at the age of 89.
A gamma-ray laser, or graser, is a hypothetical device that would produce coherent gamma rays, just as an ordinary laser produces coherent rays of visible light. Potential applications for gamma-ray lasers include medical imaging, spacecraft propulsion, and cancer treatment.
George Curriden Baldwin was an American theoretical and experimental physicist. He was a professor of nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a scientist working at the General Electric Research Laboratory and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He wrote a book on Nonlinear Optics and authored or co-authored over 130 technical papers.
Mary Yvonne Pottenger Hockaday is an American physicist who works at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2014 and the American Physical Society in 2022.
