How does one classify this thing? It does not appear to be a hadron or a boson, is it a lepton? I get the impression that it is only in existence in certain circumstances: since it is its own anti-particle, presumably it simply annihilates itself when the conditions for its existence are no longer there, which sounds more like a boson of some sort (most leptons can fly about freely). So what is this oddity, and how can we harness its oddness?
(Read up a bit on Ettore Majorana, who theorized the existence of this thing, and later just vanished: did he annihilate himself as his own anti-self?)
I’m having trouble here… is it a quasiparticle or actually a particle ?
“quasiparticles are a mathematical tool for simplifying the description of solids. They are not “real” particles inside the solid. Instead, saying “A quasiparticle is present” or “A quasiparticle is moving” is shorthand for saying “A large number of electrons and nuclei are moving in a specific coordinated way.””
“Usually, an elementary excitation is called a “quasiparticle” if it is a fermion and a “collective excitation” if it is a boson.[1] However, the precise distinction is not universally agreed.[2]”
Hmm… so we know the electron (fermion) can accept a photon (boson).
So… the result is an energetic electron, which is BOTH containing boson and fermion.
… its quasiparticle, its only quasi-fermion or quasi-boson, but either way its quasi.
I’d stick it in the bucket of “collective excitation”… a wave… its the wave causing the fractional quantum hall effect… also properly described only recently.
It’s a quasiparticle; I believe specifically a Bogoliubov quasiparticle, but don’t quote me on that. It’s not a boson, because a particle is either a boson or a fermion and it’s not a lepton or hadron as those are types of ‘real particles’.
Being its own antiparticle is nothing remarkable-- The photon is also its own antiparticle. And remember, “annihilation” in this context doesn’t actually mean “go to nothing”-- Particles that “annihilate” each other just turn into some other particles. When two of these particles meet, they might turn into other particles, or they might just continue past each other unchanged. It’s also possible that these things might be able to decay individually, but since they’re fermions, we can be certain that at least one of their decay products (more precisely, an odd number of them) must also be a fermion.
At low energies, not very much; although photons are part of the QED framework, they have no charge themselves. At higher energies, complicated things happen. For example, a process like e[SUP]+[/SUP] + e[SUP]-[/SUP] -> 2γ also occurs in the opposite direction, provided there’s enough energy. I don’t know enough about the weak interaction to comment on that (although the same caveat about photons and QED applies), but gluons carry color charge and therefore experience the strong interaction directly.