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pair production

noun

Physics. the simultaneous creation of a particle and its antiparticle by a nucleus or particle in an excited state, as when a photon is absorbed.

Origin of pair production

First recorded in 1930–35

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

British Dictionary definitions for pair production

pair production

noun

the production of an electron and a positron from a gamma-ray photon in a strong field as that passes close to an atomic nucleus

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

pair production in Science

pair production

[pâr]

The simultaneous creation of a subatomic particle and its antiparticle from some other particle or a field fluctuation. A high-energy gamma ray photon, for example, can spontaneously create an electron-positron pair in a strong electric field. Pair production is essential to theories of particle physics; pair production from gamma rays is used to detect such rays in pair production telescopes, since electrons and positrons are easily detected.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.