{"id":229142,"date":"2026-01-16T01:32:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T07:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/slowing-down-muon-decay-with-short-laser-pulses"},"modified":"2026-01-16T01:32:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T07:32:42","slug":"slowing-down-muon-decay-with-short-laser-pulses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/slowing-down-muon-decay-with-short-laser-pulses","title":{"rendered":"Slowing down muon decay with short laser pulses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/slowing-down-muon-decay-with-short-laser-pulses.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Muons are unstable subatomic particles that spontaneously and rapidly transform into other particles via a process known as electroweak decay. Altering the speed with which muons decay into other particles was so far deemed a challenging quest, requiring very strong electromagnetic fields that cannot be produced in conventional laboratory settings.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the University of Plymouth, however, explored the possibility of influencing muon decay using short laser pulses. Their paper, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/823w-2g4b\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Letters<\/i>, suggests that the behavior of muons can be altered when they pass through laser beams, an effect that could, in principle, also be achieved using laboratory lasers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRecords are regularly being set for the highest intensity electromagnetic fields we can produce in the lab,\u201d Dr. Ben King, co-author and Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Plymouth, told Phys.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Muons are unstable subatomic particles that spontaneously and rapidly transform into other particles via a process known as electroweak decay. Altering the speed with which muons decay into other particles was so far deemed a challenging quest, requiring very strong electromagnetic fields that cannot be produced in conventional laboratory settings. Researchers at the University of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}