angel particle

English

Etymology

Named by US researchers in 2017, in reference to Dan Brown's novel Angels & Demons (2000), which involves a bomb made of combined matter and antimatter.

Noun

angel particle (plural angel particles)

(physics) A Majorana particle.
- 2017 July 21, Michael Irving, “Scientists discover "angel particle" that is its own antiparticle”, in New Atlas‎^[1]:
  Zhang proposes that the team's discovery be named the "angel particle" after the Dan Brown novel Angels and Demons, which features a bomb powered by the meeting of matter and antimatter. In the long run, Majoranas could find practical application in making quantum computers more secure.
- 2020 January 3, Sam Sholtis, “The case of the elusive Majorana: The so-called 'angel particle' is still a mystery”, in Phys.Org‎^[2]:
  A team of physicists at Penn State and the University of Wurzburg in Germany led by Cui-Zu Chang, an assistant professor of physics at Penn State studied over three dozen devices similar to the one used to produce the angel particle in the 2017 report. They found that the feature that was claimed to be the manifestation of the angel particle was unlikely to be induced by the existence of the angel particle.