Positronium
Positronium (Ps) is a system consisting of an electron and its anti-particle, a positron, bound together into an exotic atom, specifically an onium. The system is unstable: the two particles annihilate each other to predominantly produce two or three gamma-rays, depending on the relative spin states. The orbit and energy levels of the two particles are similar to that of the hydrogen atom (which is a bound state of a proton and an electron). However, because of the reduced mass, the frequencies of the spectral lines are less than half of the corresponding hydrogen lines.
The mass of positronium is 1.022 MeV, which is twice the electron mass minus the binding energy of a few eV. The ground state of positronium, like that of hydrogen, has two possible configurations depending on the relative orientations of the spins of the electron and the positron.
The singlet state, 1
S
0, with antiparallel spins (S = 0, Ms = 0) is known as para-positronium (p-Ps). It has a mean lifetime of 125 picoseconds and decays preferentially into two gamma rays with energy of 511 keV each (in the center-of-mass frame). By detecting these photons the location of the decay can be found. This process is used in positron-emission tomography. Para-positronium can decay into any even number of photons (2, 4, 6, ...), but the probability quickly decreases with the number: the branching ratio for decay into 4 photons is 1.439(2)×10−6.
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