Article ID: CBB001421700

The Positive Muon Implanted in Metals---A Story Full of Surprises (2014)

unapi

During the period 1975--1990 there was an intense development, at some accelerator laboratories, of a new spectroscopy based on the interaction of an elementary particle, the positive muon, with local magnetic fields present in magnets and superconductors. It was called SR (or in some applications MuSR), which stands for Muon Spin Rotation or Muon Spin Relaxation. At the present time this spectroscopy has given access to detailed information (often unobtainable with other means), on a large number of magnetic, semiconducting and superconducting systems, but the present article deals with another aspect of SR, namely the information it could provide on how a light positive particle behaves when placed in a metallic environment. This behaviour has much in common with that of the technologically important “hydrogen in metal”-problem, but could now be studied in a very direct way since the positive muon is radioactive and sends out an easily detectable signal. This signal contains information on the particle's local environment, its motion from one lattice position to another, its trapping and release from other impurity atoms in the metal and also on the character of the motion itself, particularly at low temperatures where quantum effects dominate. It took nearly 15 years to fully interpret and understand these phenomena which is the topic of the present historic presentation.

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Authors & Contributors
Westfall, Catherine L.
Crease, Robert P.
Michael Wiescher
Hunten, Donald M.
Wang, Xiaoyi
Vara, Ana Maria
Concepts
Atomic, nuclear, and particle physics
Particle accelerators
Physics
Scientific apparatus and instruments
Government sponsored science
Research institutes; research stations
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
Places
United States
Switzerland
Germany
Europe
Brazil
Argentina
Institutions
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (United States)
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
Sanford Underground Research Facility
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
Argonne National Laboratory (Illinois)
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