Detects a microscopic element after more than a long time of searching.

After decades of hard work of both theoretical and experimental physicists around the world, now a very small particle does not charge with extremely light mass and exists for a much shorter time than 1 nano. seconds (a billionth of a second), named ' axion ' was discovered by a physicist at Buffalo University, Dr. Piyare Jain, the first to demonstrate the existence of this particle in a post. Little newspapers were read in 1974.

This discovery is much more outstanding than the research process nearly three decades ago by both Dr. Jain, professor emeritus of Buffalo University, the department of physics, head of research and many large groups. another physicist, physicists who for three decades failed to find axions in the lab using high-energy element accelerators.

Study of axion testing machine (Photo: llnl.gov)

The article on this new discovery is now available online in the British Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics at http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0954-3899/34 / 1/009 and will be published in the issue of this magazine issue of January 2007.

The results of this discovery were first presented at a two-day symposium in October at Buffalo University.

During the symposium, Nobel Prize-winning scientists and world-renowned scientists who attended this conference expressed their surprise and joy that the axion was finally discovered.

The axion particle is considered to be very important for the standard physical model and is believed to be part of most of the black matter in the universe.

'These results show that we have found the axion particle, a particle of the family of elements that they may also include very heavy particles that are currently in great demand at Different laboratories, 'said Dr. Jain.

The story of finding axions in high-energy physics - don't be confused with the study of the sun's axion particles, made by cosmologists and astrophysicists - as a novel story, with the participation of physicists ' troops ' together for years, starting in the 70s with a passion for discovering this axion.

In 1977, theoretical physicists predicted that there might be a particle with properties very similar to those described in Dr. Jain's earlier research papers; and at that time, the name ' axion ' was born. After studying that theory, there are many writings of physicists both theoretical and empirical, all mentioning the search for axions by using rays from low-mid-accelerators. Vase - tall from different laboratories around the world.

But in the 1990s, when the search for this particle proved too difficult, many groups of physicists later gave up on the search, relying on puzzling evidence that perhaps this tantalizing particle was indeed does not exist. Some groups also explicitly deny its existence and begin to view it as an unrealistic particle.

Dr. Jain's initial interest in these hard-to-find particles stemmed from the research he carried out published in 1974 in Physical Review Letters and other journals, which provide facilities for the existence of extremely small and extremely short-lived particles through experiments with particle accelerators he performed at Fermilab and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

At that time, Dr. Jain's writings elicited some interest from other physicists.

'This molecule is described in my original article in 1974,' he said. 'That experiment has revealed the existence of these molecules but not enough information to prove it. I know I have to wait until an accelerator can produce a heavy ion beam with great energy. '

Until 1999, a project called CERES experiment was performed at CERN's largest molecular physics laboratory in Geneva (Switzerland), once again focusing on finding axion molecules, but this project also failed.

According to Dr. Jain, the problem is because of their accelerators, the standard electronic machine used in today's high-energy physics experiments.

"They don't know how to control an accelerator to find particles that are short-lived," said Dr Jain. 'I know that for these non-long-lived elements - only 10 to 13 seconds - the accelerator must be placed very close to the interaction point, where the collision between the beam is released and the target is fired, so that making the molecule not run too far; because if it runs too far, it will quickly be destroyed and of course we will not capture it. This is what happens in most unsuccessful experiments. '

By using a vision detector, Dr. Piyare Jain found the axion particle, an extremely small, uncharged particle with very low mass and much shorter time than a nanosecond.(Photo: PhysOrg)

Instead, Dr. Jain used a vision detector, created from a 3-dimensional emulsion sensing material that acts both as a target and as a detector and can therefore detect particles with extremely short time, such as axion nuts for example. However, in order to successfully use this specialized detector, users must be trained in depth and experience.

In the 1950s, Dr. Jain was trained to use this type of detector by its developer, the Nobel laureate, British physicist Cecil F. Powell . Dr. Jain used it during his research work and succeeded in finding other foreign phenomena, such as charm beads, anomalon beads, quark-gluon plasma and nuclear gathering flow. In his successful experiment, axions were created under ' harsh ' conditions, high-temperature and high-pressure conditions, using heavy-ion-lead rays with energies of up to 25 trillion electrons. volts at the CERN laboratory in Geneva.

His experiments produced 1,220 pairs of electrons with defined peaks, the origin of pairs of electrons. They peaked at about 200 to 300 micrometers from the interaction point, where the collision occurred in the emulsion detector.

'With such a short distance, I can find the peak of this element with this very short time and very low mass,' he said.

After being created, he explained, axions quickly destroyed into two pairs of electrons, electrons and positrons (a very small fraction of matter with a positive charge and the same mass as the electron).

'We determine each pole for each pair of electrons and we do not accept any pair of electrons if we do not know its peak,' he said. 'Near the accelerator there is a blockage of all low-mass particles, including axions. Therefore, the surrounding environment must be removed from this blockage in order to obtain the axion's signal. '

During his long and famous research at the University of Buffalo, Dr. Jain wrote 175 scientific papers on a wide variety of physics topics, from cosmic ray research done on hot air balloon flights, until studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, research on bone tissue to find more effective cancer treatments. He concluded 'after more than half a century as a scientist at the University of Buffalo, I realized that with the discovery of this axion, my task was completed'.

Thanh Van