Potential of the J-PET Detector for Studies of Discrete Symmetries in Decays of Positronium Atom — A Purely Leptonic System

Author(s)
P. Moskal, D. Alfs, T. Bednarski, P. Bialas, E. Czerwinski, C. Curceanu, A. Gajos, B. Glowacz, M. Gorgol, B. C. Hiesmayr, B. Jasinska, D. Kaminska, G. Korcyl, P. Kowalski, T. Kozik, W. Krzemien, N. Krawczyk, E. Kubicz, M. Mohammed, Sz. Niedzwiecki, M. Pawlik-Niedzwiecka, L. Raczynski, Z. Rudy, M. Silarski, A. Wieczorek, W. Wislicki, M. Zielinski
Abstract

The Jagiellonian Positron Emission Tomograph (J-PET) was constructed as a prototype of the cost-effective scanner for the simultaneous metabolic imaging of the whole human body. Being optimized for the detection of photons from the electron-positron annihilation with high time and high angular-resolution, it constitutes a multi-purpose detector providing new opportunities for studying the decays of positronium atoms. Positronium is the lightest purely leptonic object decaying into photons. As an atom bound by a central potential, it is a parity eigenstate, and as an atom built out of an electron and an anti-electron, it is an eigenstate of the charge conjugation operator. Therefore, the positronium is a unique laboratory to study discrete symmetries whose precision is limited, in principle, by the effects due to the weak interactions expected at the level of (similar to 10(14)) and photon-photon interactions expected at the level of (similar to 10(9)). The J-PET detector enables to perform tests of discrete symmetries in the leptonic sector via the determination of the expectation values of the discrete-symmetries-odd operators, which may be constructed from the spin of ortho-positronium atom and the momenta and polarization vectors of photons originating from its annihilation. In this article, we present the potential of the J-PET detector to test the C, CP, T and CPT symmetries in the decays of positronium atoms.

Organisation(s)
Particle Physics
External organisation(s)
Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Roma, Marie Curie-Sklodowska University, National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ), Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS)
Journal
Acta Physica Polonica B
Volume
47
Pages
509-535
No. of pages
27
ISSN
0587-4254
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5506/APhysPolB.47.509
Publication date
02-2016
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103014 Nuclear physics, 103034 Particle physics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Physics and Astronomy(all)
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/potential-of-the-jpet-detector-for-studies-of-discrete-symmetries-in-decays-of-positronium-atom--a-purely-leptonic-system(2767c94f-193b-415b-a04f-ee6eeda89658).html