Yukawa's meson theory and the discovery of the muon
Teoría mesónica de la fuerza nuclear y descubrimiento del muon
- Date
- 1935-1937 · confidence high
- Place
- Caltech, Pasadena, United States / Osaka, Japan
- Credited to
- Hideki Yukawa; Carl Anderson; Seth Neddermeyer
- People
- 👤 Hideki Yukawa1907–1981👤 Seth Neddermeyer1907–1988
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Yukawa proposes in 1935 that the nuclear force is carried by a particle of intermediate mass; Anderson and Neddermeyer find in 1936 in cosmic rays a particle of that mass, which turns out to be the muon, a heavy electron without strong interaction ('Who ordered that?', Rabi). It gives rise to the idea of forces mediated by particles.
The meson-muon confusion lasted a decade until Powell's pion; Nobel Prize for Yukawa in 1949.
What it led to
- Discovery of the pion (1947)
- Concept of mediating boson (photon, gluon, W, Z)
- Second generation of leptons
- Muon tomography and proof of time dilation
Built on
- Cosmic rays1912
- The neutron1932
- Fermi's theory of beta decay (1934)
Made possible
- The pion1947
- Muon radiography of pyramids and volcanoes
- Verification of time dilation (Rossi-Hall, 1941)