How much energy is released when matter interacts with antimatter?

Question

How much energy is released when matter interacts with antimatter?

Say one proton interacting with an anti proton?

If in an absolute vaccum would antimatter exist for a long time? What causes it to vanish?

Answer 1

The interaction between matter and antimatter produces energy in the

form of radiation, that is equal with the energy of the two initial particles.



You can calculate a particle energy from the equation : E = m * c^2,

where the m is the mass of the particle when it is still, and E=rest energy



Say you have an electron and a positron. Each of them has rest energy 0.51 MeV.

Their interaction would give a photon that has energy 2*0.51 MeV= 1.02 MeV

You can do the same for any other particle-antiparticle couple.



Theoretically, if there is nothing to interact with, antimatter could exist forever.

Absolute vacuum is a theoretical concept though. It can't be created in lab and

neither be observed in some experimental way as the observation itself

contains at least electromagnetic waves.

So the answer is based on theory and not experiment.

You can read an interesting theory, called "Dirac sea", on the creation of

matter-antimatter in absolute vacuum.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

1/ Energy is conserved, so the energy released is the sum of the energies of the initial proton and antiproton in whichever frame you decide to evaluate them. They can react without annihilating each other, producing other particles (mainly pions) thanks to their kinetic energy and perhaps transforming into neutron and/or antineutron (protons and neutrons transform rapidly into each other by the absorption/emission of pions). Or they can disappear as baryons (=proton, neutron, their 'anti's' and lots of heavier unstable particles) and leave only pions behind. That's 'real' annihilation. Pions themselves decay into leptons and photons, so that there remains no nuclear matter (antimatter) in the end.



2/ antimatter would of course persist in a vacuum. It does not vanish by itself but only in annihilating with matter.