GLASHOW RESONANCE

Subject : Science & tech

Context : The neutrino observatory in Antarctica sees evidence of Glashow resonance.

Concept :

In 1959, the physicist Sheldon Lee Glashow predicted that the collision between electron-antineutrino (the antiparticle version of the electron-neutrino) and an electron at rest via the weak (nuclear) force can, at a particular incident antineutrino energy, give rise to the formation of the (then) hypothetical particle called W-boson through a resonance process.
The W-boson, being extremely short-lived, would quickly decay into other particles characteristic of the process, which should be observable.
Resonance means, for instance, in mechanical systems and musical instruments. It results in the enhancement of an effect at an instant when a certain variable of the mechanical system or the musical instrument, say its frequency, gets tuned to a particular value.
In particle physics, it refers to a sudden enhancement in the probability of occurrence of some particle interaction at a particular total energy of the interacting particles.
In the scattering between electron-antineutrino and electron that Glashow considered, the production of W-boson shows up as a peak in the cross section (a measure of probability) of that process at a particular energy.