• DOI:10.1038/286244A0
• Corpus ID: 4280317

σ± lifetimes and longitudinal acceleration

@article{Roos1980LA,
  title={$\sigma$± lifetimes and longitudinal acceleration},
  author={Charles E. Roos and John Michael Marraffino and Steve Reucroft and Joe William Waters and Michael S. Webster and E. G. H. Williams and A. Manz and Ronald Dean Settles and Gy. Wolf},
  journal={Nature},
  year={1980},
  volume={286},
  pages={244-245}
}

• C. Roos, J. Marraffino, +6 authors G. Wolf
• Published 1 July 1980
• Physics
• Nature

The interactions of 420—500 Me V/c K− in the 11T hydrogen bubble chamber HYBUC have been used to produce a sample of 120,000 σ± decays in flight1,2. We describe here how these decays were used to investigate the effects of longitudinal accelerations between 0.5 and 5.0 × 1015g on particle lifetimes. Any observed effect of acceleration on lifetime would indicate that the Lorentz transformation and/or the dynamics of particle decay is sensitive to acceleration. These data suggest that accelerations which change the Lorentz factor and which can return a relativistic elementary particle clock to rest do not cause any observable change in lifetime. This null result complements earlier measurements of the effects of transverse acceleration on muons13. Thus ensembles of elementary particles are ideal clocks which are invariant under intense accelerations.